Tag: Justification

What Now?: Centrality of Confession

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Our lectionary jumps from Romans 9:1-5 to Romans 10:5-15. This seems curious. However, Paul’s impassioned declaration of love for his siblings according to the flesh who do not follow Christ at the beginning of Romans 9 finds its conclusion in the very first part of Romans 10. Specifically, Romans 10:4 is crucial to understanding the link between what Paul says in the beginning of Romans 9 and what he continues to say in Romans 10:

For Christ is the end of the law toward righteousness for all who believe [in Christ].[ii]

Romans 10:4 is the hinge verse connecting Paul’s discussion of his siblings according to the flesh and why they do not follow Christ to the discussion he is having with the Roman Christians that they are justified by faith apart from works without forcing or causing supersessionism. 10:4 binds what Paul said before his impassioned cry in Romans 9:1-5 and what he goes on to say here in 10:5-15. Paul draws together the word of God in the First Testament and demonstrates how Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, of the Second Testament has fulfilled God’s promises to and covenants with Israel and how this Christ is the God of all, both Jewish and Greek.

Romans 10:5-15

For Moses writes about the justification out of the law, “the person who does will live by it.” Now the justification out of faith, in this way, says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘who will ascend into heaven?’ (That is to bring down Christ.) or ‘who will descend into the pit? (That is to bring up Christ out of the dead.) But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, on your mouth and in your heart. (That is the word of faith, which we proclaim.) (vv5-8)

Packed in these few verses are multiple references to various parts of Torah—Leviticus 18:5, Deuteronomy 8:17, 9:4, 30:12-14. Paul’s goal here is twofold. First, Paul’s argument follows from what he’s been writing regarding justification by faith, justification by the law, and the sustained call of his siblings according to the flesh. The source of Second Testament justification by faith alone is in the First Testament. Jesus the Christ, this man from Nazareth who is God, is the fulfillment of all the promises and covenants made in the First Testament. For Paul, Jesus is the one (the only one) who was able to secure justification out of the law because Christ is the only one who could live by it. Also, for Paul, Jesus is the one, in his incarnation, who “brings down the Christ” and the one who, in his resurrection, “brings up the Christ.” Finally, Jesus, the incarnate word of God, is near to those who hear the proclamation of the gospel, the one Paul proclaims to the Romans.

This then leads us to the second part of Paul’s goal here in these verses. While Paul is anchoring God’s fulfilling of the promises and covenants in Christ, he is also saying something about the people, the Roman Christians: once again, what they have in Christ by faith[iii] is nothing they can boast of or claim as their own. These ones are the ones who cannot live by the justification out of the law;[iv] no matter how hard they try, they will fail. They can only be justified if God acts on their behalf to justify them. Which God has done in Christ who fulfilled the law and the covenants. Thus is it only by faith wherein they are yoked to this Christ Jesus and receive his righteousness.[v] These ones do not need to ascend to heaven to find the Christ because the Christ has come in Jesus.[vi] These ones do not need to go down to the pit to find Christ, because the Christ has risen in Jesus’s rising from the dead. And, because of the power of hearing the gospel and faith that is given to them by God,[vii] the word is not only on their lips but in their hearts. Considering that in Romans 7 Paul declared that the good remains outside of one and evil close at hand, there is now the actuality that the good, for Christians, has taken up residence in their hearts and in their words by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who causes the disciples of Christ to become more like Christ. Thus, the Christian cannot be better than the Child of Israel; for the same faith that the Christian must have to be adopted into the family of God and Christ’s siblings is the same faith needed for Children of Israel and their called status.[viii] Thus why Paul then says,[ix] Because if you agree by your mouth that Jesus is Lord and if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved (v9). This is the only confession that comes from faith and asserts and confirms that God is truthful and trustworthy.

From here, Paul can easily build a case for confession as central to Christian identity.[x]

For one believes by the heart toward justification, and one agrees by the mouth toward salvation. For the scripture says, “All who believe upon him will not be disgraced.” For there is no distinction of the child of Israel and Greek; for the same Lord [is] Lord of all people, being rich in all things to all who call upon him. For “All who might call upon the name of the lord will be saved” (vv10-13).

Confession, for Paul, levels the playing field.[xi] Anyone[xii] who believes in Christ, anyone who confesses Jesus is Lord, and anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord (ref. Joel[xiii]) are saved,[xiv] whether one is Jewish or Greek. Anyone who can agree with God that God’s declaration to humanity in Christ is trustworthy and truthful humbles themselves and finds themselves submerged in God’s righteousness and glory. [xv] Maintaining the flow of thought from the beginning of the letter through chapter 9, Paul reiterates the thesis of the letter: the one who is righteous is the one who believes in Christ and is justified by faith alone.[xvi],[xvii] God’s people, for Paul and the logic of Romans, are those who are defined by faith in Christ (both in word and deed, both inner and outer, even in alignment and misalignment).

A warning is needed here: Paul’s words should not be used as a means to segregate and separate who is in or who is out of favor with God. It is also not license to force people to believe in a certain way or certain dogma and doctrine. For Paul, the point is that our confession comes from our real need for God made known to us physically in Christ and spiritually by the power of the Holy Spirit. These verses are not meant to be weapons to spiritually abuse, ostracize, marginalize, and alienate those ones God came to save from themselves for God’s self and for others. For Paul, this is all about God for anyone who feels so called to come forward and participate at God’s table.[xviii] This is why Paul then writes,

Therefore how might they call upon him they have not believed? And how might they believe in one of whom they did not hear? And how might they hear separated from proclaiming? And how might they proclaim if they might not be sent? Just as it has been written, “As beautiful[xix] the feet on the one who preaches Goodnews and good things” (vv.14-15).

Without God sending one called to be an apostle (one sent[xx]), then no one proclaims, then no one hears, then no one believes, and then no one calls upon Jesus. In this scenario, the law and the power of sin reign. However, the reality is that God sent God’s word in Christ to fulfill the law and cause God’s grace to be accessible to anyone through believing. [xxi] And this is the entire point of Romans. Calling upon, believing in, hearing from , proclaiming about, and being sent are all sourced in God.[xxii] These ones in Rome who follow Christ and who are foreordained, called, justified, and glorified find the source of their news lives wholly in God and are adopted children of God, siblings of Christ thus of Paul and of those whom Paul calls siblings of the flesh because of the beautiful feet of the one who comes proclaiming the good news of Christ[xxiii] and all the good things (peace with God, others, and the self[xxiv]) that come with Christ and faith.[xxv] All of this starts and ends with God.[xxvi]

Conclusion:

All of this that we have from God we have by faith alone apart from works, apart from birth, apart from status, apart from what is or is not in our savings account, apart from our occupations, our pedigrees and the number of degrees we have. All of this is of God and beyond our zip codes and area codes, beyond social constructions of identity, sex, gender, and race, beyond whatever class we find ourselves in. And if all of this cannot be located in and is found to be beyond what we do as human beings plodding along in the kingdom of humanity, then it sure as heck cannot be here to support the status quo, the structures that keep some up and some down, some well and some sick, some filled and some hungry, some quenched and some thirsty, some housed and some houseless. We might have systems of merit that we live in (and some of us may even swear by), but these systems fall apart in the light of the reign of God, lose power to hold captive in the liberation of Christ, refuse indifference it’s priority by the power of God’s love, and cause death to be dead where divine life is present.[xxvii]

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] τέλος γὰρ νόμου Χριστὸς εἰς δικαιοσύνην παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι.

[iii] LW 25:405-406. “In the first place, as in the glosses, it is explained that the apostle is comparing the two kinds of righteousness with each other, so that he attributes works to the righteousness of the Law but the Word to the righteousness of faith. For work was required for the Law, but faith is required for the Word (the Law was required for the deed, so that we might know what ought to be done, but for faith the Word was required not so that we might know but so that we might believe). Thus the first kind of righteousness depends on the work which has been done, but the second upon the Word which we believe. And what this Word is…as if to say that the Word which must be believed is nothing else than this: Christ died and is risen again.”

[iv] LW 25:89. “Here the word ‘man’ is emphatic. It is as if he were saying that a man can do these things and thus live in them so that he will not die according to the Law. But this is not sufficient, because beyond man there is the righteousness of faith.”

[v] LW 25:89. “That is, he is teaching nothing else but that we must believe that Christ died and rose again. This faith causes a man to live, even one who has not performed the works of the Law according to the righteousness of the Law. For those works are not necessary in order that you may live and be saved, as is the case with the righteousness of the Law, for faith suffices without these works. In this way, the apostle is comparing these two, the righteousness of the Law and the righteousness of faith, in the case of the first attributing to it good works and to the second only faith without good works.”

[vi] LW 25:406.

[vii] LW 25:407. “….the intent of the apostle is that the total righteousness of man leading to salvation depends on the Word through faith and not on good works through knowledge.”

[viii] Lancaster, Romans, 176-177. “These images already had a history of use to say that one does not need to ascend so high or descend so low to gain wisdom because wisdom is available near at hand in the law. For Paul to speak of Christ in this way is to say that wisdom is now near in proclamation of Christ.”

[ix] LW 25:90. “For Christ, as has been shown in chapter 4:25, ‘was delivered for our trespasses and raised for our justification.’ Therefore the apostle adduces these two mysteries here as he expounds the word of Moses, for the truth is that our righteousness is not by the Law and good works but by the death and resurrection of Christ. For whoever does not deny these two points, as the text continues, ‘will be saved.’”

[x] LW 25:90.

[xi] LW 25:411. “…for confession is the principal work of faith by which a man denies himself and confesses God and thus he both denies and confesses to such an extent that he would deny his own life and all things rather than affirm himself. For in confessing God and denying himself he dies. For how can he deny himself in a more forceful way than by dying in his confession of God? For then he forsakes himself in order that God may stand and his confession of Him.”

[xii] Lancaster, Romans, 178. “Paul’s main point in 10:11-13, though, is less about glory and shame itself than about who is entitled to hope in such glory. He stresses ‘all,’ Jew and Greek, with no distinction. For the community in Rome, this inclusive statement would have a leveling effect. Neither group stands above the other, so neither group should be ashamed by the other. All of them are saved by their believe and trust in Jesus Christ; salvation is neither hindered nor made possible by their ethnic identity. Those who recognize him as Lord will receive his salvation.”

[xiii] LW 25:91. “For the prophet Joel is prophesying concerning the time of grace when he says, ‘All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”

[xiv] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 177. “Mouth and heart—the public self and private self—function as one, so there is integrity in one’s identity. The external confession displays to whom one belongs because of internal commitment. The integrity of inner and out life (wholeness) that this allegiance to Jesus Christ brings must surely be included in what Christians expect salvation to be.”

[xv] LW 25:407. “For God does not require a magnitude of good works but the mortification of the old man. And he is not mortified except through faith, which humbles our own feeling of self-importance and makes a person subject to that of another. For the whole life of the old man is concentrated in the feelings, mind, or wisdom and prudence of the flesh, just as the life of serpent is in its head. And so when this head is crushed, the entire old man is dead.”

[xvi] LW 25:410. “But true righteousness comes into being by believing the words of God with the hole heart…”

[xvii] Lancaster, Romans, 177. “Jesus Christ is the end (goal) of the law. All that the law gave to Israel—the covenantal relationship, the faithfulness of God and the people, the possibility of life—is now proclaimed in Jesus Christ. Confessing Jesus is Lord acknowledges this proclamation.”

[xviii] Lancaster, Romans, 176. “By following the law that God has given, Israel shows its loyalty to God. God shows loyalty to the covenant by fulfilling the promise God made to give land to the people. When this fulfillment happens, the people are not to think (to say to themselves) that it has occurred because of what they have done. Nor are they to think heat their prosperity is due to their own actions. The law itself warns against attributing God’s gifts to one’s own righteousness. Paul’s words are not against the law or against obedience to the law, and they are not against works. Rather, they point to the way one ought to do works—gratefully acknowledging God’ grace instead of claiming credit for oneself.”

[xix] LW 25:415-16. “In the first place, they are called ‘beautiful’ because of their purity, since they do not preach the Gospel for personal advantage or empty glory, as is now the case everywhere, but only out of obedience to God as well as for the salvation of the hearers.”

[xx] LW 25:92. “From this one word ‘to preach the Gospel’ the apostle proves that they cannot preach unless they are sent. For ‘to preach the Gospel’ is the same as ‘to announce.’ But it is not possible for a man to announce the Word of God and to be a messenger of God unless God has sent him and given him the Word. For no one can snatch he Word of God, but it is taken up only when God commends it and sends it. But if this does not occur, doubtless only a lie is spoken, albeit the message has the appearance of the truth. Finally in the same message he is a wonderful manner describes the nature of peace and of good things, namely, that they are such that they can be heard alone in the Word and comprehended alone by faith, but not visibility demonstrated…”

[xxi] LW 25:417-418. “Therefore we have these two sets of contrary terms: Law—sin. The Law shows up sin and makes man guilty and sick; indeed proves him worthy of being damned. Gospel—grace. The Gospel offers grace and remits sin and cures the sickness unto salvation.”

[xxii] LW 25:412. “…When god gives, He gives so strongly and boldly that we would not have been able even to imagine such things. For He is so powerful, that is, so strong and bold, that He gives more than our weakness asks.”

[xxiii] LW 25:416. “For these good things and this peace are not exhibited to the senses but announced by the Word and can be perceived only by faith, that is, without personal experience until the future life comes.”

[xxiv] LW 25:416-417. “And the term ‘good things’ refers to the granting of the gifts of grace, and ‘peace’ to the removal of evils; therefore he places the term ‘peace; firs t and then ‘good things.’ Thus these good things are under the cross, for no man is able to possess this kind of peace and good things, unless he has renounced the peace and good things of the world and is willing to suffer for his faith in the midst of the evils and tribulation of the world and his own conscience.”

[xxv] Lancaster, Romans, 179. “Proclaiming the gospel is the occasion for God to use human words to reveal the Word, to make present the reality that is being proclaimed.”

[xxvi] LW 25:91. “Do not doubt at all that He has ascended; for this is the Word which will save you. This is the way the righteousness of faith teaches. This is the way of the compendium, the short way to salvation. For the righteousness of the Law is long, winding, and circuitous, as is signified by the wandering of the Children of Israel in the wildness.”

[xxvii] Lancaster, Romans, 180. “This Messiah is not furthering human imperial hopes, and so the good news of Jesus Christ is most welcome when it challenges messages from social institutions that act imperialistically by controlling and diminishing human life.”

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What Now?: Foreknown, Called, Justified, and Glorified

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Last week, Paul moved his readers from the introspection of chapter 7 to the extrospection of chapter 8, Paul exhorted the Roman Christians to understand the symbiotic relationship redeemed humanity has with all of creation yearning for liberation, specifically the liberation that comes with the presence of the glory of God made known in the revelation of the adopted children of God—the ones who are saved by faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit apart from any deeds. Christians, according to Paul, are the ones who understand that they are not the creator; they are the creature and God is the creator. This humble posture of the believer in Christ affirms and confirms that God is trustworthy and truthful (what God says about humanity and God’s self is true!); this is how we are justified because in affirming and confirming God’s trustworthiness and truthfulness, God deems the believer truthful and trustworthy. This then becomes the one who is adopted by God by faith and made one of Christ’s siblings, chosen to represent Christ in the world through truthful and trustworthy words and corresponding deeds. Once again, we were reminded that our salvation isn’t solely from something or someone or someplace, but, more importantly for something and someone and someplace. For Paul and the thrust of Romans, we are saved from ourselves for the wellbeing of our neighbor and creation and to the glory of God.

The last third of chapter 8 reinforces what Paul has been saying. As if he knew we could take what has been said thus far and run with it, thinking it is now up to us to save the world and our neighbor, Paul anchors it all in a subterranean dependence on the divine Spirit of God. From beginning to end, from start to finish, from the highest of heavens to the deepest mantel of the earth, this is all God’s activity—even when we pray and especially when we pray unintelligibly. While this may ruffle our American sensibilities, and specifically Western American sensibilities at that, it is important that we see how much we need God and must throw ourselves on God, on Christ, and on the power of the Holy Spirit working in us. Because, as Paul says at the end of chapter 8, if this is all of God then it is secure…absolutely nothing can undo what God has done in Christ for believers. And while this may sound like a “get-off-the-hook-of-giving-a-heck-about-the-world-and-its-inhabitants” card, it’s not. In being yoked to the One who is on the move, drafted by faith into God’s mission, and called into God’s purpose means that in our liberation from ourselves we, as Christ’s representatives and powered by the Holy Spirit, are free (in very imperfect ways) to help liberate others, to bring love where there is indifference, and to make sure life continues victorious over death.

Romans 8:26-39

Paul begins this portion of his letter by intensifying the believer’s dependence on the Spirit. Paul writes,

Now, in like manner, the Spirit takes hold of our weakness/frailty; for what we must pray for we have not perceived, but this same Spirit intercedes with/in groanings too deep for words. But the one who searches the heart has perceived the prudence of the Spirit because [the Spirit] pleads for the sake of the holy ones according to God (vv26-27).

Not even in our prayers and petitions do we find ourselves operating by our own power. In the words that we utter intelligibly and uttered unintelligibly, the Spirit intercepts and intercedes for us. When we are certain that what we pray for is what we want and even if it feels aligned to God’s will, the Spirit works in our hearts to conform our prayers and our wills to align with God’s own prayers and will.[ii] We may enter the state of prayer one way but we leave another, and that’s because the Spirit is working in us as we pray through the Spirit in the name of Christ to God. In and through prayer, we are changed as the Spirit intercepts us and our words, softening our hearts, informing and forming our minds.[iii] Also, the Spirit intercedes for us to God[iv] when we can only groan in response to the tragedies and terrors of the kingdom of humanity hallmarking the world around us.[v] In times when we cannot pray, the Spirit does so for us, bringing our moans and groans, our gnashed teeth, our collapsed posture into the throne room and pleads for our sake, rendering our inoperable and unintelligible prayers into viable communion with God.[vi] According to Paul, we do not pray alone even when we feel as if we’re the only ones praying. This is why Paul can then say, Now we have perceived that all things work together toward the good for those who love God, the ones who are being called according to purpose (v28).

Paul then moves to speak of God’s foreknowledge about those who have been and are being called—further emphasizing the believer’s dependence on God. Paul writes,

Because God knew beforehand those [who are being called] also foreordained [them] to be conformed to the image of God’s son in order that [Christ] may be the firstborn among many siblings. And those [God] foreordained these ones [God] also called; and those [God] called, these ones [God] justified also; and those [God] justified, these ones [God] glorified also (vv29-30).

Rather than causing hackles to go up, Paul’s point here is to bring comfort to those who believe in Christ, those who have received the Holy Spirit, and those who are trying to do this thing called life while straddling the kingdom of humanity and the reign of God. What matters most here is not who is in and who is out of heaven. Rather, the point is those who are found in Christ by faith are sealed by God[vii]: foreknown, called, justified, and glorified. Believers may be able to boast about a lot of things in the world, but they are forbidden from boasting in their salvation as if it were their own; they didn’t earn it, they didn’t achieve it, they didn’t do it for themselves. Also eliminated is the aspect of chance; for Paul, believers are foreknown, called, justified and glorified intentionally.[viii] Paul here in Romans 8 anchors the very identity and ontology of the Christian in Christ, in the Holy Spirit, in God. All of it, from beginning to end, is because of God’s grand and great love for the whole entire cosmos[ix] (ref. Jn 3:16). And in light of this, it makes sense to hold on to the spiritual fact that not only will all things work together toward the good for those who are being called (even when things look really bad[x]) (v28) but also that If God is for these ones, who is against these ones?? [xi] (v31).

Paul’s declaration and proclamation of the gospel rings through the halls of the church in Rome,

God who did not spare God’s only son, but handed him over in defense of all of us, how will God not give freely all things to us with [Christ]? Who will bring to account against the elect of God? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who will give judgment against [the elect of God]? Christ, the one who died, and so much more, the one who was raised, who also is at the right hand of God who also intercedes on behalf of us! (vv32-34).

As elsewhere in the Second Testament epistles by Paul, Paul works himself up in a ripe gospel moment resulting in fervent proclamation as he recalls for the Romans the good word of God in Christ! And he brings the conversation full circle, linking the work of the Spirit and Christ together through active intercession on behalf of the ones who pray intelligibly and unintelligibly. Humanity is fully represented in the throne room of God as our prayers mingled with divine intercession and intervention fill up bronze bowls pleading that God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

And if that wasn’t enough, Paul weaves in the divine love of God for the cosmos, humanity, and the elect. This very God, who flung the stars and the great and lesser lights into the sky is for them. This God who did not spare God’s only Son is for them. [xii] This one who is the judge of judges, the king of kings, the priest of priests is for them.[xiii] Thus, these ones can cast their entire selves onto this God not in the sense of giving up but in the sense that behind them stands this one who cannot be defeated by anything and who will not forsake them. God’s love, according to Paul, binds and entwines, grafts and drafts, grows together with and through the beloved of God—those who are called, hear their name, and follow Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. That God loves humanity first is the catalyst for our love of God, the type of love that is born from within seeking the glory of the beloved. Nothing, says Paul in the remaining verses, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING will ever be able to separate you from God and God’s love in Christ made known by the power of the Holy Spirit (vv35-39).

Conclusion

So, why proclaim such good news to us? What do we do with this very good news? What now? Well, we treasure it, let our weary and skeptical minds bath in it, our broken hearts heal in it, and our fatigued and exhausted bodies rest in it. We should let it wash over us, soak us down to the marrow, and let it begin to take root in our souls so that it can begin to form and inform, mold and sculpt our identity and action to conform to God’s reign, as those who are foreknown, called, justified, and glorified by God. We, through our hearing of the proclamation of Christ and our solicited believing in the Christ Jesus, this man who is God, we are created anew to become the representatives of God in a world that has either all too quickly forgotten this magnificent, unconditional, always and forever love of God or has given up hope that anything could ever be different, that there is only indifference, death, and captivity, that all is lost. As the adopted children of God, the “holy ones,” the saints, we are to bring the light of the word of truth to illuminate the darkness of falsehood and expose it, we are to use the keys of the reign of God to liberate anyone who is caught in captivity by the biased policing of the kingdom of humanity, and we are to use our voices and bodies against the authorities, and the principalities of darkness ruling this decrepit world to push back death in the name of life. We are called to live and spread grace, overhauling the power of sin and death one person at a time.[xiv] We are called to love because we were first loved.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] LW 25:365 “For unless the Spirit is helping, it would be impossible for us to bear this action of God by which He hears us and accomplishes what we pray for.”

[iii] LW 25:367 “…so God comes upon our feeling and thinking, seeing what it is praying for, what it is suitable for, and what it desires; then heeding the request He begins to mold the form which suits His art and His counsel. Then of necessity the form and model of our thinking is destroyed.”

[iv] Lancaster, Romans, 148. “Because the Spirit groans with us and intercedes for us, God knows our longing even when we are unable to articulate it.”

[v] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 148. “Living in and for a new reality and way of doing things puts us at odds with the way things are done now, so we do not rise in social standing or have the usual kinds of influence. Even in such weakness, we are empowered by the Spirit. To persevere in allegiance to God when something else constantly calls for our allegiance takes prayer. Because we stand between times, hoping for things not yet seen we do not see properly how to pray, so the Spirit works with us to assist us in prayer.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 148. “So inevitably our prayers are expressed in words and concepts that fall short of divine understanding. But the Spirit sees beyond our articulation to the prayer that lies beneath our utterance, and it makes our thoughts and words into real communion with God.”

[vii] Lancaster, Romans, 150. “The emphasis on calling and predestination is a way of affirming God’s initiative in salvation. Those who are called, foreknown, and predestined will be conformed to the image of the Son, so the Son Jesus Christ will be the firstborn among a large family of adopted children (8:29). When God decides to save (predestines), Go calls. Those who are called are also justified and glorified (8:30). What God begins, God also completes. God initiates salvation as well as carries it out to its fulfillment.”

[viii] LW 25:371 “For if it were not the purpose of God, and if our salvation depended upon our will and works, it would depend upon chance…he is showing that the elect are not saved by chance but by necessity.”

[ix] Lancaster, Romans, 150. “The theologically important meaning of predestination in this letter is about God’s initiative in our salvation, about God’s faithfulness in fulfilling God’s purpose for us to be saved, and about how both these affirmations remove all grounds for human boasting in what we have done for ourselves.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 149. “For those who ‘love God,’ all things work together for good. Even though the subject of the sentence is ambiguous (is it God, the Spirit, or the things themselves that are bringing this about?), the affirmation is not in doubt. Because we know and love God, we may be confident that good will come even out of the suffering that is now endured.”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 153. “The only rightful judge on that day is God; so if God is for us, no one could oppose us.”

[xii] Lancaster, Romans, 153. “Jesus Christ himself, who took on weakness and died a shameful death to glorify weak people, who was raised and with whom we also will be raised, and who has a place of honor with God, now intercedes for us. How could anything possibly sperate us from such a love?”

[xiii] Lancaster, Romans, 153. “Neither sufferings in history nor cosmic powers nor anything else will succeed in separating us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

[xiv] Lancaster, Romans, 149. Those who love God are called according… “This description sets our love for God in the context of what God is doing, so love for God is neither merely emotional nor does it arise apart from God’s own work. Paul addressed the recipients of this letter in 1:7 as ‘God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints.’ Recalling this opening address shows us that we love God because we are beloved, that is because God first loved us; and because we are loved, we are called to be saints, that is, called to be holy or set apart as God’s …Being set apart for God means living in the dominion of grace—loyal to God rather than to sin.”

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What Now?: Simul Justus et Peccator

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

The last two Sundays we’ve covered Paul’s argument in Romans 6 that leed to his prohibitions against returning to sin and the life of the old person who is persuaded by the ways of the kingdom of humanity and exhortations to the believers in Rome to pursue the reign of God, to actively present themselves for service in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation. Believers, according to the logic of chapter 6, are not defined by their works of the law in attempts to self-justify; rather, they are justified by God’s grace which is given to them when they assert and affirm (by faith) that what God says about them is true. In this exchange based on faith, the believer finds themselves forgiven and justified, the law fulfilled on their behalf by Christ and divine righteousness given of which the Spirit is a deposit and confirmation. The believer is, again by faith, united to God in such a way that they are grafted and grown together with Christ; thus, any attempt to return would result in a maiming and marring of the believer who would have to amputate themselves from the vine. For Paul, to go and seek one’s justification by own’s own accord and deeds is the basis of sin (which is founded in unbelief, not believing God is trustworthy and truthful) and is anathema for believers who have identified with Christ in his death and thus identify (and will identify) with Christ is in his life and resurrection. Believers are not justified by the law but by faith and therein receive the law fulfilled and are liberated—in accord with the law of love—to now go love the neighbor to the glory of God without needing to use the neighbor as a means to an end.

Sin, for believers and according to Romans 6, is a present reality but not one that controls them, for they are now no longer enslaved to sin and its impulses, its domination and control. Believers are now voluntarily enslaved to God’s reign through faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit; they are not their own (and, in fact, never have been!). What is important to retain from the past two Sundays is that, according to Paul, due to the encounter with God in the event of faith, believers—those who follow Jesus out of the Jordan and to the Cross—are no longer willing participants in the death, indifference, and captivity of the kingdom of humanity (no longer can they uphold and promote any institution and structure, ideology or authority that intentionally promotes these things). Rather they are Christ’s representatives who participate in bringing divine love, life, and liberation to God’s beloved, the neighbor and this brings God glory. But this does not mean they are sinless as if they will never sin again. They are still human creatures in need of intervention and disruption, and this is what the passage from Romans 7 tells us…

Romans 7:15-25a

Paul writes, For I do not know understand/cannot judge that which I accomplish[ii]. For I practice not that which I desire but I do this thing which I hate (v15). In humility, Paul uses himself as an example of the tension of being simul justus et peccator (simultaneously justified and sinner).[iii] No matter how much education and training any of us have—including clergy—we are not exempt from the tension we live in as new persons striving against the old person. For Paul, sin isn’t just some detached external act or something that lacks power, it is a force that can dominate and it must be resisted because it is actively prowling about looking to devour and dominate. Paul emphasizes the tension between the failure of the outer person to align with the inner (regenerate) person. This tension Paul emphasizes highlights a greater reality that the law is necessary and good, as Paul says, But if I do this which I do not desire, I concede to the law that [it is] good (v16). While Paul has articulated earlier that the law brings the trespass and this surely cannot be good, it is. (Theologically) In the discrepancy between the inner desire and the outer doing of the opposite, our need is exposed: we are brought to the end of ourselves and in need of a mediator through whom we can align the outer person with the inner person so that the desired thing is the thing that is done thus not hated but loved. Also, (Civically), failure to do that which is desired and opting for that which is hated leads us to conclude that law is needed so that we do that which desired even if we do it (internally) kicking and screaming and obeying the law (even in letter only) can maintain peace and order and keeps evil at bay while protecting the upright. And in this concession (both theologically and civically) we see that the problem isn’t the law; the problem is us.[iv]

Paul explains further about the inner/outer tension highlighting the role sin is playing (even in the new life of the regenerate),

But now I, I no longer accomplish this thing but that which dwells within me: sin. For I have perceived that good does not dwell within me, that is there in my flesh. For it is easy[v]/close at hand for me to desire, but not to accomplish the good. For I do not do the good I desire, but the evil that which I do not desire this I do. Now if I do not do that which I desire, I, I no longer accomplish this thing but that which dwells in me: sin (vv17-20).

Here Paul is highlighting that the tension between the new person/the inner nature and the old person/the outer nature is provoked by the misalignment between the two. Using the term “flesh,” Paul speaks of the part of the person that is in the world (the outer nature) and most prone to wanting to conform to the will of the kingdom of humanity rather than the will of God (the old person), which causes a the tension between the inner and outer, the new and old, the justus and peccator. Paul is not making a distinction between the good soul and the bad body;[vi] rather it is one person who is torn in two[vii] as the battle wages on through the will and flesh, through the mind and heart and the muscle memory of the body,[viii] through the self.[ix] This is why Paul centers that there is another at work here: sin;[x] sin (the domination and power of) is at work creating the discrepancy between what is desired (the good) and what is actually done (the evil).[xi] It is not enough to be educated in the good, the head and the heart can know all about the good but the *actual* doing of the good is something altogether different.[xii] As the colloquialism goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” (This also explains why things like sexism, racism, homophobia, ageism, ableism, etc., all, sadly, still exist.) This is why Paul can then say, Therefore, I find a law for me when desiring to do the good that for me the evil is easy/close at hand (v21). Sin and its domination and power reside in the person while good is external, it is outside the body, thus evil is easier or closer at hand to do. Just like the nervous system preferring a familiar hell to an unknown heaven, that which is easier to do is more comforting for a body eager to use the least amount of energy to do anything. To know the good and to do it are not only two different things, but it also demands a lot of energy and fortitude for the knowing to become the doing.[xiii] In fact, it takes external intervention and disruption of the self and the domination of sin. [xiv]

Conclusion

Thus why Paul then writes,

For I rejoice in the law of God according to the inner person, but I see in my limbs another law waging war against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity by the law of sin which dwells in my limbs. Miserable person I am! Who will deliver me out of this body of death? Grace/thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord (vv22-25a).

The necessary intervention and needed disruption to help bring the outer person into alignment with the inner person is no one else but the mediator Jesus Christ of Nazareth, this man who is God. When/ever we come into an encounter with God in the event of faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we begin our journey through this tension and we receive a Spirit (the Divine Spirit) that brings the good—Jesus himself—closer to us than it ever was before (though not to such an extent that we not no longer sin[xv]…we still prefer to do that which is easy and comfortable).[xvi] In that Jesus—the good himself—is closer to us through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we receive directly the mercy, forgiveness, love and grace of God (which is the fullness of good in the inner person) apart from/despite our external deeds. This spiritual reality, then, helps us to labor to bring the outer person in line with the justified and righteous inner person so that the good can be sought and done in the temporal realm for the wellbeing of the neighbor and to the glory of God.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] LW 25:64. “This ‘doing’ means not to fulfill our duty, but to try to do so and to desire to do so. Therefore he also distinguishes ‘to do’ (facere) and ‘to accomplish’ (perficere) (v.18).”

[iii] LW 25:339. V 17 “Therefore sin remains in the spiritual man for the exercise of grace, for the humbling of pride, for the repression of presumptuousness. For he who does not earnestly strive to drive out sin certainly still possesses it, even if he had not committed any further sin for which he might be condemned. For we are not called to ease, but to a struggle against our passions, which would not be without guilt…if the mercy of God did not refrain from imputing to us.”

[iv] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 126-127. “Because the law is holy and just and good, it is ‘spiritual,’ that is, it is of the Spirit, or of God. If sin is able to use the law to bring death, it is not because there is a problem with the law. Rather the problem is in ourselves.”

[v] LW 25:339. “Therefore he who comes to confession should not think that he is laying down his burden so that he may lead a quiet life, but he should know that by putting down his burden he fights as a soldier of God and thus takes on another burden for God in opposition to the devil and to his own personal faults.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 127-128. Sin dwells in me/nothing good in me (vv17-18) “Paul’s point, though, is something different. Although he is talking about the self, he is not talking about the nature of human beings—what we essentially are. Rather, he is talking about where sin resides, and therefore where it exercises its control.”

[vii] LW 25:339. “Moreover, we must note that the apostle does not wish to be understood as saying that the flesh and spirit are two separate entities, as it were, but one whole, just as wound and the flesh are one. For although the wound is something by itself , and the flesh is another thing, yet because the wound and the flesh are one , and because the wound is nothing else than wounded or wakened flesh, we can attribute to the flesh the properties of the wound.”

[viii] Lancaster, Romans, 127. “‘Flesh’ conveys what it is like not to be oriented to God but to be oriented to the world without reference to God. This problem surely embodies the world without reference to God. This problem surely embodies itself in some way, but the problem is not the body. Being ‘of the flesh,’ Paul says, is having been ‘sold into slavery under sin.’ Paul is not concerned to explain how or why one gets sold into this slavery; he only describes the condition itself.”

[ix] Lancaster, Romans, 128. “Although a universal power, sin does not rule from a distance or exert its power in some diffused, impersonal way. Sin lives within the self, so its control of the self is near and personal. Because good does not live within the self, it is not in control of the self.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 127. “The explanation for this contradiction is that it is not ‘I’ or the self that is the controlling agent but sin (7:17).”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 127. “Living under the dominion of sin involves a deep and confusing contradiction, namely not doing what one wants but what one hates (7:15).”

[xii] Lancaster, Romans, 127. Ancient idea that reason keeps passions in order and if it knows the good it does the good, “Knowing what was truly good, then, should lead to doing what was good. Paul, though, points out that knowing what is good does not always lead to doing what is good.”

[xiii] Lancaster, Romans, 128. “…sin rather than good resides in the self, so evil rather than the good ‘lies close at hand’ (7:21). Because it is so close, it is much easier to grasp and implement what sin wants instead of what the law directs. So even if one delights in the law…and studies it regularly with the intention of learning from it, and keeping it, the self is in conflict—wanting to enact the goodness of the law but under the control of sin. So even if one knows the good intellectually (with the mind) one may not carry out the good (with the members of the body). What one actually puts into practice is in conflict with what one knows to be right.”

[xiv] Lancaster, Romans, 128. “Trapped in this way, the self is miserable. Furthermore, sin is so strong that it is not possible for the will to resolve itself out of the problem. The self needs to be rescued from it. Jesus Christ is, of course, the deliverer, and Paul thanks God for him (7:24-25).”

[xv] LW 25:64. “He uses the term ‘sin’ because according to blessed Augustine although in Baptism there is forgiveness as far as the guilt is concerned, yet it remains in fact and again turns us toward sin.”

[xvi] LW 25:63. “God in Christ restores man as created and cleanses corrupted man of his guilt immediately and of his weakness gradually.”

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What Now?: Liberated Unto Life and Love

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Last week we looked at Romans 6:1-11 and saw how Paul, using baptism and faith, demonstrates that we cannot voluntarily re-yoke ourselves to sin and the death, indifference, and captivity of the kingdom of humanity. We are grown together with Christ in both his death and, thus, his resurrection through our identification by faith with Christ (and his death thus his resurrection). Being grown together provokes the imagery of grafting: we are grafted onto the branch of Jesse who is Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, this man who is God. For us who are justified with God by faith in Christ apart from deeds by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are forbidden from using our new spiritual liberation in a way that participates in furthering indifference, death, and captivity (intentionally); as those who are justified, we are not grafted onto and drafted into God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation for the neighbor to the glory of God.

Here, in the second half of Romans 6, we get our second μὴ γένοιτο! Also, we receive Paul’s profound insights about what it means to be the recipients of divine liberation as those who believe. We are not, according to Paul, free to return to our old ways and old patterns and the patterns of the kingdom of humanity. We are enslaved to God’s righteousness made known in Christ and proclaimed and promoted by the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, in the second half of chapter 6, we see that our liberation in and with God is a liberation that sets us on a different path from our society and culture: we are liberated from ourselves for others and not from others for ourselves. We are not our own, we are God’s beloved children, siblings of Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit and are, thusly, drafted into God’s divine mission and heavenly revolution, on earth as it is in heaven.

Romans 6:12-23

Based on what was written in vv 1-11, Paul begins the second half of Romans 6 with two prohibitions and a command/exhortation,

Therefore do not let sin be ruler in your mortal body for the purpose of subordinating it to its various[ii] impulses, and do not present your limbs as offensive weapons of unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as living out of death and your limbs as offensive weapons of righteousness for God (vv12-13).

For Paul, and based on what he explained above in vv1-11, the logical conclusion of being liberated from sin is not a backward movement but a forward trajectory where the entire person (limbs and all) is used to bring glory to God in the world. Rather than using one’s liberation and limbs for destruction and death, the Christian, for Paul, is liberated to act both defensively and offensively in and for construction and life. By refusing sin to rule in the mortal body, the corresponding sinful impulses are quieted and are refused opportunity to find footing[iii] (defense); by presenting oneself as the living and being rescued from death, the believer can use their limbs as weapons for the glory of God[iv] (offense).[v]

Thus, why Paul then says, For your sin will not rule [unless you let it[vi]] over [you], for you are not under law but under grace (v14). Here, Paul quickly correlates his earliest arguments in Romans to his argument here about the relationship of the believer to the old sinful person. As the believer is no longer defined by obedience to the law but rather is defined by God’s gift of grace received by faith, so, too, is the believer defined not by sin and its rule and impulses but by the power of God living in them by faith[vii] anchoring them to the ground of the living.[viii] The law, in and through Christ’s death and resurrection, has been put back in its proper place: not as a divine tool to condemn humans, but as a divine gift for humans to use to love their neighbor and bring glory to God (original intent); as the law is put back in its place and stripped of its power to condemn, sin itself loses ground because sin thrives where humans are convinced they are justified by the law and their own deeds and not by God’s word of promise and faith clinging to the promise.[ix]

This is why Paul then says,

What then? Should we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Hell/ck no! Have you not perceived that if any of you present yourself [as] obedient slaves, you are slaves whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness [through faith]? Now, thanks be to God that you were slaves of sin but you obeyed out of [your] hearts toward that which you were handed over to according to the rule of the gospel; now being liberated from sin, you were brought under subjection for righteousness (vv15-18)

In other words, what Paul is saying here, is that the Christian, though liberated is not an autonomous person—meaning, the believer is not a law unto themselves, liberated to do whatever they want to do at whatever expense to their neighbor and to God’s glory. Taking a cue from Martin Luther and his treatise, The Freedom of a Christian, the Christian is liberated from themselves for others/their neighbor to the glory of God. This notion rubs against the orientation of the person in the kingdom of humanity who believes that they are liberated from others/their neighbor for themselves. For Paul, there is no such thing as a liberation unto the self that is liberation in the true sense. Either you are a slave of sin and are free to serve sin and death, or you are a slave of God (righteousness) and are free to serve God and life. The language Paul uses in these verses highlights that there is no neutral ground here[x] and there is no blank slate; for Paul, you are either serving sin or you are serving righteousness, you are voluntarily selling yourself into slavery to sin or voluntarily selling yourself into slavery to righteousness, [xi] you are either being molded by sin or molded by the gospel[xii] and being made more Christlike,[xiii] an argument that is both highly logical and contemporary to his context (which is why Paul then says, I am speaking in a way common to humans… (v19a) and follows with a re-exhortation[xiv] toward active participation in righteousness and away from active participation in unrighteousness (v19b-c).

Wrapping up chapter 6, Paul writes,

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free/unrestrained for (had no claim to) righteousness. So then what fruit did you have at that time about which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things [is] death. But now after being liberated from sin being brought under subjection to God the fruit you have [is] sanctification, and the end [is] eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the favor/grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (vv20-23)

Paul presses home the point, when we are slaves to sin, we have no claim[xv] to divine righteousness and find ourselves molded to sin and its various impulses and held captive by its ruling over us (a rule ending in eternal death).[xvi] However, when we are liberated from sin by faith to be formed by the Gospel of God into Christlikeness where we receive divine eternal life.[xvii],[xviii] This means that believers, who are now slaves of God and of divine righteousness, serve the reign of God and reject the things of the kingdom of humanity that promote sin, its impulses, and its wage: indifference, captivity, and death (now and in the future).[xix] Believers, as those who have been handed over to the incarnate Word of God and are being formed by the law of love and the gospel, are forever altered,[xx] unable, according to Paul, to turn back to a life of upholding the status quo, supporting systems and ideologies that thrive in fear and anger, and promoting institutions and structures that promote death.[xxi]

Conclusion

We are free and liberated by faith and God’s grace revealed in Christ Jesus, this man who is God. However, we are not liberated unto autonomy or ease[xxii]; liberation from sin and death unto righteousness and life puts a “claim” on us,[xxiii] puts a demand on us: the law of love. Being encountered by Divine Love, reborn from Divine Love, and nourished and sustained by Divine Love means that this Divine Love puts a demand on us because Divine Love can acknowledge the demand and the claim and meet the Beloved there in the midst. To follow Christ is to endure the trial of the journey out of the Jordan to the Cross; Christians who are disciples of Christ will have lives decorated with the accolades of death and resurrection, of self-sacrifice and self-receiving, of solidarity and identity with the neighbor (esp. the oppressed). Daily the Christian will, by the grace and mercy of God, take a long hard look in the mirror, confess their complicity and captivity to the ways of the kingdom of humanity, and then, by the power of the Holy Spirit, try to be different in this world, as one scholar put it, “Being under grace, then, places us under continuing revolutionary struggle,”[xxiv] privately and publicly, just as it was for Christ—the one who was truly liberated from himself for the wellbeing of the entire world.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 110. “Epithumia could include desire for many pleasurable things, including food and comfort. The control of desire was n important topic of reflection in the ancient world that resulted over time in identifying many types of passions that could get out f control Anger and fear, for instance, could be as powerful as lust.”

[iii] Lancaster, Romans, 111. “Spiritual well-being has to include freedom from the temptations into which the passions lead us. With no passions, sin cannot find a place to enter.”

[iv] LW 25:320 “Thus the apostle wants to say that the members of the body must not be surrendered to ‘sin,’ that is, to evil lust and to the tinder of sin, for in obeying sin they become weapons of unbelief, and out of believers they make unbelievers in that they perform the orks of unbelievers according to the lusts of sin. But we must obey God, in order that ‘our members may be instruments of righteousness to God’ …that is of the life of faith and life.”

[v] Lancaster, Romans, 110. “If Paul’s concern about epithumia is limited to sex, we will miss the many ways that sin threatens to take control of our bodies. He reminds us that by being set free from sin, we no longer have to let those desires rule our lives. In fact, we are expected to present ourselves to God, thereby accepting God’s dominion of grace and receiving God’s grace to resist their controlling power. “

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 114. “Never our own masters, we must choose whom to serve—sin or righteousness.”

[vii] LW 25:316 “Therefore sin has dominion over all those who are under the Law…For he who is without Christ is still in his sins, even if he does good works.”

[viii] Lancaster, Romans, 111. “Grace exerts shattering power as it makes the old person die so that the new person can live.”

[ix] LW 25:316 “For those people understand the expression ‘to be under the Law’ as being the same as having a law according to which one must live. But the apostle understands the words ‘to be under the Law’ as equivalent to not fulfilling the Law, as being guilty of disobeying the Law, as being a debtor and a transgressor, in that the Law has the power of accusing and damning a person and lording it over him, but it does not have the power to enable him to satisfy the Law or overcome it. And thus as long as the law rules, sin also has dominion and holds man captive.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 117. “We see that our choice is between death and life, with no middle ground.”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 114. “It was common for a person to sell oneself into slavery for economic reasons or event for eventual social advancement if serving someone of high social importance. This voluntary practice of putting oneself into servitude lies behind Paul’s explanation about presenting oneself as an obedience slave (6:16).”

[xii] LW 25:317 “For the wisdom of the flesh is opposed to the Word of God, but the Word of God is immutable and insuperable. Therefore it is necessary that the wisdom of the flesh be changed and that it give up its form and take on the form of the Word. This takes place when through faith it takes itself captive and strips off its own crown, conforms itself to the Word, and believes the Word to be true and itself to be false.”

[xiii] Lancaster, Romans, 115. “In other words, along with the enslavement image is also an image of being molded into the likeness of Christ. Obeideicne, then, is allowing oneself to be poured into the teaching, and so take the shape of Christ. Modern minds may find it easer to embrace this image than one of slavery.”

[xiv] LW 25:321 “For through the terms ‘sanctification’ and ‘cleanness’ he is trying to convey the same concept namely, that the body should be pure, but no with just any kind of purity, but with that which comes form within, from the spirit of sanctifying faith.”

[xv] Lancaster, Romans, 116. “The only freedom we have in the dominion of sin is freedom from righteousness: that is, freedom from being in right standing with God.”

[xvi] LW 25:53fn12 “That ‘sin reigns’ and ‘to obey’ sin is to consent to and do what sin desires.”

[xvii] LW 25:54fn16 “That is, you have been delivered from the form of error into the form of the Gospel…For the Word is not changed, but we are, and we yield to Him…For ‘the Word became flesh,’ so that we might be made the Word.”

[xviii] Lancaster, Romans, 116. “if we obey sin we get what we deserve: our wages are death. If we obey God, we receive God’s free gift, grace, which bring us into the relationship with God that means eternal life.”

[xix] Lancaster, Romans, 116. “If honor and shame are connected to social status, and if faith in Jesus Christ overturns the usual standards for honor and shame, then their participation in the entire social system is something to be ashamed of. A system of exploitation that assigns personal value hierarchically and treats those on the lower end of that scale as worthless is s a system of death.”

[xx] Lancaster, Romans, 116-117. “Living in the dominion of grace obedient to righteousness calls for a completely different way of life.”

[xxi] Lancaster, Romans, 116. “The followers of Jesus may not fully be extricated form that system, but where once they participated without questioning the system, now they are ashamed of it. Where once these followers of Jesus may have worked dot position themselves as high on the scale as they could, perhaps treating those below them poorly in order to get an advantage of over them, now they understand how pointless and harmful that behavior is.”

[xxii] Lancaster, Romans, 117. “Being under grace does not give Christians an easy life. Instead, grace puts us under pressure between its promise and its demand.”

[xxiii] Lancaster, Romans, 117. “The very power that affirms us also makes claims on us.”

[xxiv] Lancaster, Romans, 117.

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What Now?: Justified by Faith

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Nothing makes me more excited about the lectionary than seeing Romans listed as the epistle reading. There’re a few reasons for this. First, the Letter of Paul to the Romans features significantly as one of the principle texts of Luther’s reformational insights thus is a “must read” for Protestant Christians generally and Protestant theologians specifically. Second, it’s a letter that has found itself the center of attention in momentous instances of church history and which finds import and context in the post-modern era; it’s a letter that transcends time and space, refusing relegation to the era of its inception. Still, if I were to stake my love of Romans on one specific characteristic it wouldn’t be the two reasons already given, though they feature significantly. It would be this: it’s the absolute best place to start when considering what Christians believe and why they (should) believe it. Romans takes us to the heart of the formation of Christian Doctrine in its most explicit and didactic capacity. Romans is the closest thing we have to a Pauline “systematic theology” built from and around profound development of a different strand of Jewish and rabbinic teaching resisting anti-Judaic and supercessionist trappings.

When considering all that has (quickly) transpired within the Christian metanarrative comprising the seasons and events from Advent through Trinity Sunday, it makes intellectual and faithful sense to pick up a text that essentially and qualitatively answers the question that is on the lips of any disciple on this Sunday: what now? So, in my opinion, there’s no better way to jump into “Ordinary” time than by jumping into the deep end of Christian thought with Romans! Considering the gospel passage from last week on Trinity Sunday, on this morning we, the baptized, enter the teaching phase of our annual Christian pilgrimage as we are made disciples of Christ (again) by the power of the Holy Spirit and to the glory God and for the wellbeing of the neighbor.

Romans 4:13-25

We open on Paul discussing promise and commandment. Paul explains, For the promise that he would be the heir of the cosmos did not come to Abraham or his descendants through the law but through justification of faith (v13). In Romans 4, Paul is building a case for the primacy of faith as the foundation of how one is made righteous (justified) before and by God. Here, in v. 13, Paul is using Abraham to demonstrate that Abraham received the promise of God not through a command but through faith that God is who God says God is. What precedes Abraham’s following God is Abraham’s trust in God.

Further, Paul writes, For if the heirs are to be such out of the law, faith has been made void and the promise rendered inoperative. For the law produces/brings about wrath; but where there is not law neither is there transgression/violation (vv14-15). Paul emphasizes that if the heirs of Abraham are made so by the law, then faith (as justification and righteousness before and with God) is emptied out, it is void and useless. Concurrently, if faith is made empty and useless, this means the promise is inoperative because one cannot believe in the promises of God through their own deeds; promises are believed and clung to by faith. God speaks and is considered trustworthy and honest or God is not—only faith can do this, recourse to works of the law is taking matters into one’s own hands and denies God God’s trustworthiness and honesty (essentially declaring God a liar). According to Paul, the law brings about something different than faith;[ii] where faith brings about the application of the truthfulness and trustworthiness of the promise of God, the law brings about wrath and the subsequent loss of the promise.[iii] This is basic civil and theological logic: without the promise, the law is forced to function in a way that it is not supposed to function. Synchronously, where there are rules and commands there is bound to be the breaking of rules and commands thus the presence of wrath exponentially increases in comparison to where there is no law or command. The law isn’t bad,[iv] but if the law is being used to justify oneself then it is being used badly and thus causes that which it does not want to cause (wrath).[v] For Paul, one can only be justified/made righteous before God by ascribing to God what is rightfully God’s—trustworthiness and truthfulness[vi]—and this can only be done by faith. Faith places the emphasis of promising and fulfilling where it belongs: with God.

This is why Paul can then say,

For this reason [justification is] from faith, so that in order to secure the promise according to grace to all the descendants, not only to the ones from the law but also to the ones who [share] from the faith of Abraham—who is the parent of all of us, just as it has been written, ‘I have made appointed you the Parent of many nations—in the presence of God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and the one who calls the things that are not as being (vv16-17)

For Paul, Abraham receives the promise of God by faith thus opening access to the promises and who can be grafted into this promise of God to Abraham for the wellbeing and benefit of the entire cosmos. The promise received by faith means that anyone can believe and, if this, then anyone who encounters the promise and believes is then grafted into Abraham’s family without everyone having to become a member of one nation. If by law, then the cosmos and everyone/thing in it collapses into one nation which is antithetical to the trajectory of the gospel proclamation—while aiming to make one body of Christ, gospel proclamation and hearing is not a nation making enterprise. The promise is that Abraham will become the parent of many nations, not one singular nation. The God who made such a promise is the God who calls the dead to life and who calls into being that which isn’t; this is not a God who is bound by human legalism or the designs of superiority and nationalism that are characteristic the kingdom of humanity and its death dealing and destruction making ways.

Paul then writes,

Beyond hoping in hope, [Abraham] believed with the result that he would become ‘the parent of many nations’ according to that which has been said, ‘In this way your descendants will be.’ And not weakening in faith he took note of his own body having been deadened—beings somewhere around a hundred years old—and taking note of the deadness of Sarah’s womb. Now toward the promise of God Abraham did not dispute but being empowered by/in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that which God has promised God is able also to do (vv18-21).

For Paul, Abraham features as not only the progenitor of God’s chosen people, but also as an example of one who is justified by faith apart from works of the law. For Abraham and all his descendants, being an heir is something that comes by faith and not by legal law adherence.[vii] Paul presses an important point here: justification and righteousness is through trusting and deeming truthful the God who made the promise (back in Gen 12-17) and as such justification and righteousness are of God who deems one worthy based on faith and not on birth, or pedigree, or nationhood, or skin-color, or sex and gender, or any legal law adherence.[viii] If it is by these things then faith is rendered useless and the promise would be inoperative (neither faith nor the promise would matter). If it is by these things then humanity can boast; but humanity, according to Paul, cannot boast because justification and righteousness are the doings of God and not of us (Paul emphasizes that Abraham’s trust was in God and not in his own strength for his body and that of Sarah’s was deadened; therefore Abraham cannot boast in himself but only in God.[ix]) And because this is all of God and by faith, the promise of God to Abraham can transcend time and space, boundaries and boarders. For Paul, Abraham’s trust in God and his considering God trustworthy and truthful, Wherefore [his faith] was reckoned to him as righteousness/justification (v22).

Conclusion

As it was for Abraham, so it is for all those who come after Abraham and are encountered by God’s call through God’s word in the event of faith.[x]

Now, ‘it was reckoned to him’ were not written for the sake of Abraham only but for us also to whom it comes so that it is reckoned to us, the ones who believe upon the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over for the sake of our trespasses and was raised for the sake of our acquittal/being pronounced justified/righteous (vv23-25).

The beginning of our journey as disciples of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is built on faith and not on works of the law—no matter how great those works can be. Our union with God and our being grafted into the body of Christ is done by faith alone and not by any works. All of this is a gift of God, something we did not earn through our birthright and/or merits. Paul at the end of our passage drives home how no one, not one person, is exempted from the death of Christ: we are all guilty. And if this is so, then we are all under the condemnation that comes with breaking the law. (Not only have we broken a law, in the death of Christ we caused the entire law to fold in on itself; no work of ours, no law obedience of ours can remedy that catastrophe.) And if this is also so, then we are trapped in captivity to our condemnation, unable to extricate and liberate ourselves. Jesus’s death and resurrection from the dead is God’s activity on our behalf to liberate us and set us up before God as justified and righteous.[xi] This is the fulfillment of the promise from Gen. 12-17 and it is accessible to us only by faith. So, as we begin (again) to believe in Jesus’s resurrection from the dead and his ascension to heaven releasing the divine Spirit among us, we see that our resurrection (present and future) is dependent on the same faith and trust Jesus had in God. And even as we are rendered unto dust in awakening to our guilt, we are brought into new life by our faith and dependence on Christ, in faith affirming God as trustworthy and truthful, and here we are given (again) hope in this God who creates and recreates,[xii] accounting us righteous and justified by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] LW 25:278. “For the Law and faith deserve opposite things.”

[iii] LW 25:278. “That is, the Law merits wrath and the loss of the promise, but faith deserves grace and the fulfillment of the promise…”

[iv] LW 25:279. “Thus, the Law works wrath, that is, when it is not fulfilled, it shows the wrath of God to those who have failed to provide for its fulfillment. Thus the Law is not evil, but they are evil to whom it was given and to whom it works wrath, but to others (that is, the believers) it works salvation; actually it is not the Law that works this but grace. Therefore, if the promise were through the Law, since it works wrath, it would follow that the promise is not a promise, but rather a threat. And thus the promise would be abolished and through this also faith.”

[v] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 85.

[vi] LW 25:40 “For if God promises and there is no one who believes Him when He promise, then surely there will also be no promise of God and no fulfillment, for it has been promised to no one, since no one has received it. Therefore faith ratifies the promise, and the promise demands faith in him to whom it is made.”

[vii] Lancaster, Romans, 85. “Inheritance is clearly a gift. It is not something owed because of adherence. Because this inheritance is not a matter of legal adherence, all Abaham’s descendants (Jew and Gentile) can receive this gift because the faithfulness of Abraham is a possibility for all of them.”

[viii] LW 25:280. “If seed and physical generation were enough to justify an to make people worthy of the inheritance, it follows that faith is not necessary for justification and or worthiness of that kind, since he who is righteous and worthy needs neither justification nor worthiness.”

[ix] Lancaster, Romans, 86. “Because he cannot boast in his own achievements, Abraham is in a position to honor God alone, as God should be honored. God reckoned Abrahm’s faith as righteousness not because of Abraham’s own glory, but because Abrahm glorified God.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 87. “Paul asserts that just as this faith was counted on Abraham’s behalf, our faithfulness to the same God  (who did another outrageous thing by raising Jesus from the dead) will be counted as righteousness for us.”

[xi] LW 25:284. “The death of Christ is the death of sin, and His resurrection is the life of righteousness, because through His death He has made satisfaction for sin, and through His resurrection He has brought us righteousness. And thus His death not only signified but actually effects the remission of sin as a most sufficient satisfaction. And His resurrection is not only a sign or a sacrament of our righteousness, but it also produced it in us, if we believe it, and it is also the cause of it.”

[xii] Lancaster, Romans, 86. “The God who creates is the same God who resurrects. This God has power over death and nothingness, and so this God is worthy of our hope.”

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Liberated and Devoted

Psalm 78:3-4 That which we have heard and known, and what our Elders have told us, we will not hide from their children. We will recount to generations to come the praiseworthy deeds and the power of God, and the wonderful works God has done.

Introduction

The paradox of faith is that it’s both private and public, it’s big and small, it’s dynamic and restrained, it’s orderly and chaotic, it’s strong and weak, it’s life and death, it’s liberation and devotion.

The journey through Romans collides into this paradoxical faith that refuses to be categorically defined by one set of rituals or dogmas; in fact, it suspends ritual’s and dogma’s feeble claim to define or contain it. The reason for this paradoxical substance is that faith reflects the substance of God: faith is from God and faith is for God and is directed (back) to God. Neither faith nor God can be confined to human assumptions and intellectual concoctions. With faith and God, every day is a new day—every day presents and offers God’s mercies that are ours by faith, and this day will not be like the last one or like the one that comes next. You wake up and you are thrust—once again—on to God in faith, trusting that God loves you today as God loved you yesterday and will love you tomorrow.

So, our activity from day to day is defined not so much by our schedules and lists—although those can be so helpful with daily demands—but by what may happen. We have no control how God will summon our faith to manifest as love in the world to the benefit of the neighbor. Maybe the day will be quiet as you care for creation—weed the garden, water the plants, walk the dog, pet the cat, make dinner, rest and relax. Or maybe the day will present with neighbors (literally) knocking on your door, a phone call summoning you, an email needing your complete presence, or a random encounter with a stranger at the store.

Paul has worked hard to demonstrate how we are to discipline our outer nature to come in alignment to our inner nature, where our deeds are in alignment to our faith. Thus ,these actions take on the genetic and chromosomal likeness of our faith: loving, life-giving, and liberating. Faith orients us to God but that is not all, faith orients us to God through our neighbor and to our neighbor through God.  And this liberating faith will manifest itself in loving devotion to the well-being of the neighbor. And this may even mean, says Paul:

Romans 14:1-12

Now, welcome the ones who are weak in faith, but not for the reasons of plotting judgments. Indeed, some people believe in eating all things; but the one who is weak eats vegetables. The one who eats must not treat with contempt the one who does not eat, and the one who does not eat must not judge the one who eats; for God welcomes [that person]. Are you, you the one who judges the household servant belonging to another? [They] stand or fall to their own Lord, but [they] will be made to stand for the Lord is able to make [them] stand.[1]

Rom. 14:1-4

At the end of the disciplined outer nature is a return to the inner nature: do not judge. Literally. Are you, you the one who judges the household servant belonging to another? It’s here where Paul unifies the believer as a whole person: we are justified by faith apart from works which makes us love our neighbor in word and deed thus we do not judge our neighbor by their works, for their inner nature is the thing that is in line with God (or not!). Thus, they will express themselves into the world as they are so lead and as they can handle according to their conscience.[2] So, welcome the neighbor in but not to force them to become more like you or to fight with them about how they are (self) expressing their faith in love. The only thing that is necessary is love (remember 13:8, the believer is to be indebted to the neighbor in love).[3]

Driving the point home, it’s not necessary everyone eat the same way, dress the same way, view the day the same way—all these things are liberated from condemnation.[4] The only thing essential and necessary is love, divine love for the beloved, calling the beloved unto God and into the well-being of the neighbor (mutually). In this way, the believer is freed up from two very exhausting things: judging and controlling the neighbor. Letting the inner nature, of the neighbor be that which is between them and God is to give your own attention to yourself. For those who feel comfortable and called to eat and dress in a certain way should do so without judgment—whether another person agrees with them. Ultimately, the Spirit is at work in the conscience of the neighbor, especially the ones who share in the faith.[5] Why spend so much energy trying to get everyone to look the same, eat the same, be the same…wouldn’t this fly in the face of the singularity in plurality that is at the heart of Abraham’s call to be the father of many nations? Not one, but many (remember Romans 4?); so, too, should each gathering of the beloved reflect plurality and multitude…

Paul rounds out the discussion by bringing it all back to Christ and the love of God.

For not one of us lives for themselves and no one dies for themselves. For if we live, we live to the Lord; if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live and we die, we are of the Lord. For to this [end] Christ died and lived, so that also he might be Lord of the dead and the living. Now, why do you, you judge your sibling? And why do you, you treat your sibling with contempt? For we are all placed beside the tribunal of God…

Rom. 14:8-10

The goal here is to live liberated in love with the fullness of life; but not just for you, for your neighbor, too. You are pleasing to God as you are right now; so, too, is your neighbor/sibling—whether they act like you or not. If you feel led and called to freely participate in this or that ritual, this or that tradition, this or that act of worship, to dress this or that way, or eat this or that, you are free to participate; but, says, Paul, do so freely and according to your conscience which is the divine location of encounter with God in the event of faith.[6] You are enveloped in the grace and mercy of God and not held hostage by your ability to conform to the status quo or another’s expectations, not even society’s expectations, not even parents’ expectations; you are free to be you to the glory of God and the well-being of your neighbor.[7]

Conclusion

Two words of caution by way of remembrance:

  1. Remember we don’t live for ourselves; we don’t live alone, work alone, exist alone; rather we are intimately and profoundly connected to others be it family (immediate and extended), to our neighbors, to others in society (work and play), and even connected to those who have transitioned into God before us by means of our remembering-love. The glorified self-autonomy perpetuated in the mythology of the post-modern and western conceptions of human existence must be captured and put to death. If not, liberation will take on isolating and divisive characteristics. This means that any notion of liberation that is for you and you alone is a lie; in Christ’s economy it is sin. Putting ourselves first and foremost is the number one way to miss the mark when it comes to divine love and the neighbor.
  2. And with this emphasis on the other and divine love, remember that our encounter with God in faith is a return of God’s love for you with love for God. To love another is to love whom they love (1 Jn 4:19-21[8]). As my mother loves me, she loves my children because I love them; as a mother, I love those whom my children love because I love my children and they love these. As it is with us who are so basic, so it is with God. God’s love for me is never to be used as a weapon to abuse or threaten my neighbor or to cause them neglect and isolation. It is always liberative love making itself known in devotion to the neighbor.

Luther, at the very beginning of his treatise on The Freedom of a Christian, writes,

A Christian person is a free lord above everything and subject to no one.
A Christian person is a devoted-peer servant of everything and subject to everyone.[9]

The Freedom of a Christian

This paradox expresses the thrust of Romans in the best way. The believer is absolutely and positively free—above everything—a queen and priestess. But in this true and real freedom, the believer is so free she can and will serve her neighbor. Liberation fosters devotion; freedom is oriented toward justice. For the truly liberated person is free to put herself aside, like Christ who, to quote Philippians,

…though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death–
even death on a cross.

Phil. 2:6-8 NRSV

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] LW 25, 485. “…understanding the term ‘weak’ as referring to people who are overly careful or still superstitious in some respect, who think they ought to do what they really do not need to do.”

[3] LW 25, 486. “Thus the meaning of the apostle is that in the new law all things are free and. Nothing is necessary for those who believe in Christ, but love is sufficient for them, …”

[4] LW 25, 487. “For every day is a feast, all food is permitted, every place is sacred, every time is a time of fasting, every kind of apparel is allowed, all things are free, only that we observe moderation in their use and that love and the other things which the apostle teaches us be practiced.”

[5] LW 25, 492-493. “For the strong man has his own opinion and is moved by his own reasons, and likewise the weak by his…leave him in peace and let him be satisfied with his own motives (or to say it in more popular language) let him stand secure and immoveable in the directions of his own conscience.”

[6] LW 25, 495. “Thus the whole error in this idea is that we fail to consider that if we are pleasing to God, all of these things must be done not by the compulsion of necessity or by the drive of fear but in happiness and a completely free will.”

[7] LW 25, 499. “But the apostle has something special in mind in this verse, namely, that he wants each person to be content in his own mind, or as it is commonly phrased, in his own thinking, and not judge another man in his thinking, nor should the other spurn him in return, lest perhaps he who is weak in faith, having his own mind, thinking, or conscience, but being disturbed or offended at the ‘mind’ of another person, begin to act contrary to his own ‘mind’ and thus conclude one thing and do something else and so be at odds with. Himself.”

[8] The NRSVUE has “19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

[9] WA 7, 21; LW 31, 344. Translation mine from the medieval high german

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Inwardly and Outwardly: loved and liberated

Psalm 138:7b-9 Though God be high, God cares for the lowly… Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you keep me safe; you stretch forth your hand against the fury of my enemies; your right hand shall save me. God will make good God’s purpose for me; God, your love endures for ever; do not abandon the works of your hands.

Introduction

One thing I find fascinating about how Paul speaks of the encounter with God in the event of faith is not only the robust conception of union with God in our inner person, but the ramifications of that event of faith working out in love through our bodies. We are not only inwardly changed as if it’s just about where my soul goes when I die; we’re outwardly changed, as well. Our outer posture in the world changes as our inner posture is brought into alignment with God through faith, grace, mercy, and love. This change makes sense: anyone who feels safer, loved, accepted, secure, exposed but not rejected, the more that person will begin to behave similarly in the world.

So, last week I told you that Paul was about to make a shift from a profound and robust discussion of the event of justification with God by faith alone in Christ alone by the power of the Holy Spirit alone apart from any works to an even more enriching discussion (read: exhortation) about how that encounter with God in faith will work itself out in love in the world, especially toward the neighbor. Chapter 12 marks the beginning of that shift, and Paul starts with the mind, by saying,

Romans 12:1-8

I exhort you then, Siblings, through the mercies of God to bring your bodies as a holy and living sacrifice, well-pleasing to God, your reasonable service. And do not conform to this present age, but be transfigured by the renewal of the mind so that you prove the will of God—the good and well-pleasing and complete. (Rom. 12:1-2)[1]

If the Romans believed that there was a narrowing of the mind and its thoughts, that presumption is denied by Paul. The juxtaposition Paul is making here is the way “this present age” thinks and the way the believer will now think as a result and consequence of the encounter with God in the event of faith. One is stiff and dead, and the other is flexible and alive.[2] One is narrow; the other broad. One is set on destruction, the other on building. Our bodies are not dead sacrifices but living ones. Bring your bodies as holy and living sacrifices, well-pleasing to God. Harkening back to the prophets of old Hosea (6:6), Isaiah (1:11), and Samuel (1 Sam 15:22), this means the desire of God’s heart is not the sacrifice of animals, but of us; not of things dead but of things living, beating, hearing and seeing, acting and doing, laughing and rejoicing, weeping and having solidarity with those who weep. In this way, writes Paul, the believer proves the will of God; not that it’s true or not as in recourse to apologetics. Rather, God’s will is proved into the world by lively and dynamic life believers live out into the world; thusly, God’s will is proven as real.[3]

And before we get caught up in the narrow (this present age) definitions about what God’s will is—the definitions bent on excluding people from the presence of God—we must keep in mind the very big and broad notions of what it means to participate in the will of God in the world. Micah can help us here,

God has told you, O mortal, what is good,
    and what does God require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
    and to walk humbly with your God? (6:8)

By means of living unto God the believer lives as a holy and living sacrifice[4] that is well-pleasing to God and this living and acting and doing is in the world among and before the neighbor. This is Christian being and existing. [5] Christian existence is not about being closed off and up, terrified of missing the mark (sin), stuck for fear of trying to be righteous and good[6] but rather living boldly and fully in the reality that you are righteous and good by the word and declaration of God. Then, from here, living into the world and in this way—walking humbly with God, doing justice, and loving kindness—the world and its inhabitants—flora and fauna, human and animal kind—benefit because God’s will (love, life, and liberation) are further released into the world. And the fun part is that this is what is reasonable service unto God, the well-pleasing, the thing that puts a smile on God’s face: when we live into the world as those who are loved and who then love in word and deed.[7]

And this may mean (and it definitely will) that living in the world and proving the good and loving will of God demands our actions in the world will be different.[8] Where there is injustice, we will bring justice; where there is unrighteousness, we will bring righteousness. Where there is hiddenness, we will bring exposure; where there is lying, we will bring the truth; where there is ill will, we will choose good-will; where there is vengeance seeking, we will bring trust in God; where there is destruction and death, we will bring healing and life. There is no promise that this road will be easy; in fact, I can only promise you it will be hard. Even still, it is our calling so that God’s life, love, liberation are brought further and deeper into the outermost edges of the entire world, seeking to release the beloved from captivity.

The next stop is having a sober and humble opinion of ourselves—without this, we will be unable to live as God so wills us to live. We must first embrace our equality in the eyes of God, none of us is above the other, even if we carry different burdens and demands, or have different responsibilities and vocations. Paul presses us further than equality among individuals, he refers to the community of believers as the one body in Christ with many limbs/organs. Just as the limbs and organs—as various and many as they are—do not have a hierarchy among them, each is dependent on the other, so, too, are we to be toward each other in our various roles. Let us not forget every part of the body is impacted when one limb/organ is impacted.[9] Herein is part of the proving of God’s good will starting with our own body: hurting when one of us hurts, surging to the locus of pain to heal, carrying a bit more burden to lighten the load on the part that hurts, protecting the one who hurts, and celebrating when there’s healing, experiencing relief all over, being awash in happy endorphins and hormones.

Conclusion

To close, I want to quote from Luther about Romans 12:6,

“[Paul] has shown above how we ought to conduct ourselves toward God, namely, through the renewal of our mind and the sanctification of our body, so that we may prove that is the will of God. At this point, and from here to the end of the epistle, he teaches how we should act toward our neighbor and explains at length this command to love our neighbor. But it is remarkable how such a clear and important teaching of such a great apostle, indeed of the Holy Spirit [God’s self], receives no attention. We are busy with I don’t know what kind of trifles in building churches, in creating the wealth of the church… in multiplying ornamentation and gold and silver vessels…and in other forms of visible display. And the sum total of our piety consist of this; we are not at all concerned about the things the apostle here enjoins, to say nothing of the monstrous display of pride, ostentation, avarice, luxury, and ambition….”[10]

As we proceed through the remainder of Romans and as you leave here, ask yourself: what looks like the will of God? What looks like love? Life? Liberation? What do you see bringing encouragement, wholeness, and comfort to this humble body of Christ? Whatever that is, press into it without reservation. But don’t stop there, also be on the lookout for what disproves the will of God…  What is stealing from others and from the body of Christ? What brings destruction? What brings death? What tears apart? What causes division? Whatever it is, do not succumb to it but walk differently, and let the light of Christ expose that which is false and destructive, that which is not of God.

As the body of Christ, we are only as strong and healthy as each limb and organ; may we be known for bringing health and life to all our limbs and organs so that we can be the means by which God’s will is further proven into the world for the beloved.

[1] Translation mine, unless otherwise noted

[2] LW 25, 437. “Therefore, those ‘who are led by the Spirit of God’ (Rom. 8:14) are flexible in mind and thinking.”

[3] LW 25, 433. “This comment is made by reason of progress. For he is speaking of those people who already have begun to be Christians. Their life is not a static thing, but in movement from good to better, just as a sick man proceeds from sickness to health, as the Lord also indicates in the case of the half-dead man who was taken into the care of the Samaritan.”

[4] LW 25, 435. “The true sacrifice to God is not something outside us or belonging to us, nor something temporal or for the moment, but it is we ourselves, forever…”

[5] LW 25, 434. 5 stages of Aristotle redefined, “…so also with the Spirit: nonbeing is a thing without a name and a man in his sins; becoming is justification; being is righteousness; action is doing and living righteously; being acted upon is to be made perfect and complete. And these five stages in some way are always in motion in man. …through his new birth he moves from sin to righteousness, and thus from nonbeing through becoming to being… and when this has happened, he lives righteously.”

[6] LW 25, 436. “For it is nothing that we perform good works, and live a pure life, if we thereby glorify ourselves; hence the expression follows acceptable to God. He says this in opposition to vainglory and pride which so often subvert our good deeds.”

[7] LW 25, 437. “…‘Present your service which is reasonable, that is, your bodies as a living sacrifice.’”

[8] LW 25, 438. “For whenever God gives us a new degree of grace, He gives in such a way that it conflicts with all our thinking and understanding. Thus he who then will not yield or change his thinking or wait, but repels God’s grace and is impatient, never acquires this grace.”

[9] LW 25, 444. “For although there is one faith, one Baptism, one church, one Lord, one Spirit, one God, nevertheless, there are various kinds of gifts in this faith, church, lordship, etc.”

[10] LW 25, 444-445.

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According to the Spirit

Psalm 119: 105, 111-112 Your word is a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path. Your decrees are my inheritance for ever; truly, they are the joy of my heart. I have applied my heart to fulfill your statutes for ever and to the end.

Introduction

Paul is faithfully walking us through the depths of divinely gifted grace, mercy, and faith—the material expression of divine love. Faith surges forth from God’s love, plumbs the depths of human existence and returns to God’s love, carrying with it God’s beloved, you. There’s nothing you can do to fracture that love because it’s not yours to fracture and you didn’t cause it; you are the beloved because God declares you to be the beloved, because God loves you without a why or wherefore. When you believe this love is for you, this is faith: faith accepts God’s promise as true, bringing glory and honor to God, proving God truthful—worthy to be trusted. This is loving God for God’s self. Just love… pure, unrestricted, uncalculated, unconditional love. This is the type of love noted by the popular Mumford and Sons song, “Sigh No More”,

Love, it will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be
There is a design, an alignment
A cry of my heart to see
The beauty of love as it was made to be[1]

Love is the great alignment; love aligns us to itself because love liberates. Love aligns us to God because God is love and the source of love; and in this alignment we are aligned to our neighbor and ourselves. We love others and we love ourselves. Blemishes and all; meager attempts to change and all; hot beginnings and tepid endings (or the reverse) … love, God’s love, bears all things. This is why Paul can say in Romans 8,

Romans 8:1-11

So then at this very time [there is] not one punishment following condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life liberated you in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. [2]

(Rom. 8:1-2)

There is, in other words, no condemnation for those who trust God, who consider God trustworthy. This means that the person and being of the human being who misses the mark, isn’t categorically worse than one who has not missed the mark. It is not that those who trust God by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit are now without sin as if they do not sin. Rather, it’s about being exempted from condemnation for sinning; because the believer is justified by faith apart from works, even bad ones…even good ones! While there still maybe be “horizontal consequences” for missing the mark, with God, with Love, it is not determinate of being God’s beloved. Thus, Paul continues,

For the powerlessness of the law by which it was weak according to the flesh, God sent God’s own son in the form of sinful flesh and on behalf of sin condemned sin in the flesh so that the commands of the law might be fulfilled in us, not for those who walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

(Rom. 8:3-4)

The law, according to Paul, is not able to grant the necessary strength to fulfill it (to do the law); the law is powerless to make one obey its commands. In this way the law is made weak, exposed as weak according to flesh—our inability to do it. The law can only declare what’s to be done and what’s not to be done, but the law cannot cause the law to be fulfilled and upheld. Only love can do that.[3] Even if the law is fulfilled in deed while the heart and mind grumble—lacking love—this is not fulfilling the law because there is no love and it’s dry, heartless service to the law. We are in the thick of serving ourselves, and only ourselves.[4]

So, if the law is placed as a door granting access to God only if it is completed or fulfilled, then there’s no access because not only can we not do it rightly and fully, but the law cannot grant the power to do so. Thus, it can only deny entrance. However, God’s love exceeds the law, herein is mercy, grace, and freedom from the demand to do anything else but just love in response. Mercy and Grace eclipse the law because God’s love can move around the law to the one being commanded and usher that one into God’s love as the beloved. This is what Christ did: God sent God’s Son, Jesus, to be the representation of God and God’s love in the world, to be the door (the way, truth, and life) to God and God’s love, to show those who walked according to the flesh how to walk according to the Spirit.

How did Jesus’s life and death demonstrate this? By his resurrection. Here’s the key: Paul writes,

For those who exist/live according to the flesh, they judge/observe the things of the flesh, but the ones who [exist/live] according to the Spirit, [judge/observe] the things of the Spirit. For the aspiration of the flesh [is] death, but the aspiration of the Spirit [is] life and peace. On the very account that the aspiration of the flesh [is] hostility toward God, for it is not submitted to the law of God, indeed it cannot; now those who exist/live in the flesh are not able to please God.

(Rom. 8:5-8)

First, what is God’s law? To love God and to love the neighbor (these two are one; the ten break into these two). Working all the way back to the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, what happens? Jesus’s baptism. Who speaks? God. What does God say? “This is my son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (or some rendition). Fast-forward to Jesus’s trial: whom do we release and whom do sentence? Barabbas and Jesus, respectively. Thus, in this moment it is highlighted that the law is not kept in two ways: we sentenced God’s son to the cross—the one who spoke to us about love—and we clearly did not listen to him. We chose our own wisdom over God’s and determined who was in and who was out, who was to live and who was to die—this is judging according to the flesh, and the aspiration of the flesh is death.[5] Judging according to the flesh, we forced the law to do the very thing it was not supposed to do: condemn to death an innocent man who was our neighbor and condemn God. In this, Christ bore our sinfulness (fully) took it into himself, took on the guilt that was not his[6]—the Sinless one became the sinful one, identifying fully with all those oppressed and marginalized by the judgment of the flesh and the worshipping of law at the expense of God and neighbor—to the point of blatant hostility toward both.[7]

But God! Exclaims Paul:

But you, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so then the Spirit of God dwells in you…Now, if Christ [is] in you, then the body is dead concerning sin, and the Spirit is alive concerning righteousness. Now if the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ form the dead will make [you] alive…

(Rom. 8:9, 10-11a)

What happens after Jesus died? God resurrects Jesus. This is the vindication of the righteous life of Christ that becomes (mercifully and graciously) ours by faith alone. It is in this crazy story of Christ being resurrected where we see the ultimate act of divine love, mercy, and grace: we are exposed, yet we are summoned forward into God’s love and not into God’s condemnation. Not only did we not get what we deserved (mercy) we received something we did not deserve (grace); this *is* the epitome of the actuality of divine love for you, for us. By divine mercy and grace calling us forward out death and into (new) life, how do we do anything but run to the very arms of God, and throw ourselves against Abba, loving God for God’s sake because we were first loved? [8] And here, in the lap of God, embraced by and embracing God, the law is done.[9] It is silenced; it has no stake here because love is bigger than the law and love is the point. Here, the law returns to its rightful spot: a means by which we serve our neighbor in love, mercy, and grace (sometimes by obeying it and sometimes by breaking it).

Conclusion

We are called to walk according to the Spirit and not according to the Flesh. This is not about “not sinning” this about showing mercy and grace and love to those who are held far off, those who cannot do right by society, those who are condemned already, and those who are oppressed and ostracized. The law is not bad, but when we use it defend our desires or mold the world or other people according to our judgment according to the flesh, it becomes bad and a means to exacerbate our sickness of othering, casting out, eliminating, condemning, determining the livelihoods of bodies not ours.

Walking according to the Spirit is not about elevating this or that commandment or decree; it’s about love, it’s about mercy, grace, forgiveness and absolution. It’s about loving God and loving our neighbor just because.[10] It’s about seeing the other person standing—vulnerably and humbly—before you, and giving them space to just be. Love will always liberate. Mercy will grant life. Grace will provoke love. And there we go around again.

Beloved, you are loved. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Loved. And when you forget look to the cross, because Christ died and rose again to bring you the fullness of new life. And then go love as you’ve been loved.

[1] Mumford and Sons “Sigh No More” Sigh No More 2010.

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted; “Sin” is also “missing the mark”

[3] LW 25, 345. “Therefore, unless faith gives the light and love makes us free, no man can either have or do anything good, but only evil, even when he performs the good.”

[4] LW 25, 346. “But nature set for itself no object but itself toward which it is borne and toward which it is directed; it sees, seeks, and works only toward itself in all matters, and it passes by all other things and even God Himself in the midst, as if it did not see them and is directed only toward itself.”

[5] LW 25, 345. Human nature “…in particular cases human nature knows and wills what is good but in general neither knows nor wills it. The reason is that it knows nothing but its own good, or what is good and honorable and useful for itself, but not what is good for God and other people. Therefore it knows and wills more what is particular, yes, only what is an individual good.” And, “This curvedness is now natural for us, a natural wickedness and a natural sinfulness. Thus man has no help from this natural powers, but he needs the aid of some power outside of himself. This is love, without which he always sins against the Law ‘You shall not covet,’ that is, turn nothing on yourself fand seek nothing for yourself but live, do, and think all things for God alone. For then a man will know the good in every way along with all particular good things, and he will judge all things. Thus the law is impossible for us.”

[6] LW 25, 349. “For the sin by reason of which sin in the flesh is condemned is itself the penalty of sin which Christ took into His own flesh which was without sin, yet for the sake of the penalties of sin He took on the likeness of sinful flesh. Therefore sin which is in the flesh of all other people is condemned because of the sin of Him in whose flesh there was no sin.”

[7] LW 25, 344. “It is certainly true that the law of nature is known to all men and that our reason does speak for the best things, but what best things? It speaks for the best not according to God but according to us, that is, for things that are good in an evil way. For it seeks itself and its own in all things, but not God. This only faith does in love.”

[8] LW 25, 346. “For grace has set before itself no other object than God toward which it is carried and toward which it is moving; it sees only Him, it seeks only Him, and it always. Moves toward Him, and all other things which it sees between itself and God is passes by as if it had not seen them and directs itself only toward God.”

[9] LW 25, 348. “Thus the law is fulfilled because God alone is loved. For he who does not fear death because of God, likewise does not love this life more than God, and therefore he inwardly hates himself but loves God above all things. For he who loves God more than himself, surely loves God above all thing, since a person loves nothing as much as himself. But this is impossible for the flesh; for the wisdom of the flesh makes a person love himself above all things, even more than God.”

[10] LW 25, 350. “To be sure, the Law in itself is very good. It is as with a sick man who wants to drink some wine because he foolishly things that his health will return if he does so. No if the doctor, without any criticism of the wine, should say to him: ‘It is impossible for the wine to cure you, it will only make you sicker,’ the doctor is not condemning the wine but only the foolish trust of the sick man in it. For he needs other medicine to get well, so that the then can drink his wine. Thus also our corrupt nature needs another kind of medicine than the Law, by which it can arrive at good health so that it can fulfill the Law.”

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Free to Love

Psalm 13:5-6 5 But I put my trust in your mercy; my heart is joyful because of your saving help.  I will sing to God, for God has dealt with me richly; I will praise the Name of God Most High.

Introduction

Let’s review what’s transpired thus far in our journey through Romans:

In Romans 4 we learned that justification, according to Paul, is by faith alone apart from (any) work. Faith anchors into the promise of God (which was given before the law). According to Paul, Abraham trusted the promise of God, and this is what justifies Abraham. Faith in the promises of God justifies because believing God’s promises ascribes to God the honor due God: trustworthiness and worthy to be believed. From faith comes the doing of the law—remember, the law was given as means to assist God’s people in the world toward their neighbor, it was never meant to be worshipped. However, eventually the law eclipsed love in that it ceased to serve the people and the people began to serve the law—love was held in captivity to law. Thus, according to Paul, the law’s impact is known in its wrath, because we only feel the law when we break it—because the reward won’t come until the law is completed/fulfilled (thus, why we cannot be justified by our works because we need to do them all the time). However, Paul says, “[Jesus] was handed over on account of our trespasses and was raised up for the sake of our justification” (v.25). Thus, it is all by faith and trust; and in this way Abraham becomes (truly) the elder of many nations and through him they are blessed (no matter their culture and context, time and tense).

In Romans 5 we saw that, for Paul, being justified by faith yokes the believer to God’s peace. This peace comes with faith and is eternal because it is assured and secured by God and not by our actions and works. Thus, we can come close to God, be one with God, love God for God’s sake and not love God or use God as a means to an end. Also, God’s peace brings us peace with our neighbor whom we can love without a why or wherefore (without using them). And, finally, by faith and God’s peace we are given peace with ourselves because we are loved by a God who has demonstrated God’s deep solidarity with us in our worst plight: condemnation and death. When we should’ve received what we deserved because of our inability to judge rightly—the reason Jesus went to the cross—God loved us and demonstrated it through Jesus’s resurrection which secured for us the knowledge that God loves us no matter what and will not forsake us even when we do the worst! (I.e., try to kill God).

Now last week we looked at the first part of Romans 6, and we discussed our liberation from the condemnation of sin.[1] If Jesus was handed over on account of our trespasses, then for us to return to sin’s domination (whether by means of obeying to achieve something or by means of breaking it just because we can or by ignoring sin) is to deny Christ his work on the cross, it is to side-step the event of the cross and to tell God that God isn’t needed (this is the opposite of bringing God honor and glory, the antithesis of declaring God to be trustworthy). Also, in focusing on our sins, we forsake our justification by faith because we do not trust God that God has dealt with it. Thus, according to Paul, we are to be “dead” to sin… not that we do not sin—Christians sin until the end of time, says Luther—but that it does not exert control over us. And as we discussed last Sunday, there are two ways sin can re-exert control over us: by focusing on it by means of strict obedience (as if it is the only word) and by breaking it just ‘cuz. So, instead, Paul exhorts, just live, live as those liberated from sin and are imperfect, because otherwise we will return to being closed in on ourselves.

Now, this week…staying in Romans 6, Paul writes,

Romans 6:12-23

Therefore, let not sin reign over your mortal body (σώματι) in order to obey its inordinate desire, and do not present your limbs as weapons of injustice for sin, but present yourself to God as the living out of the dead and present your limbs as weapons of righteousness for God. For sin will not have authority over you; for you are not under the law but under grace. What therefore? May we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it not come to be! [2]

Rom. 6:12-15

As Paul moves through chapter 6 of Romans, he brings the discussion of the law and sin down to a personal level: our own bodies. So, if you’re feeling a bit attacked, don’t worry… you’re being attacked. Once again, we are confronted with the problem of intention, but this time it’s bodily intention. Last week we were looking at the inner intention, and now we are looking at outer intention. What we do with our bodies matters, says Paul. Just as we are to be dead to sin—not letting it have control and condemnation over us—we are also not to actively let sin reign over our bodies causing us to obey sin’s inordinate desires. We are not to spend our intellectual/emotional/spiritual time consumed with sin—by being consumed with not sinning, intentionally sinning, or ignoring it completely as if one does not sin. And we’re not to submit our bodies to sin, either. So Paul exhorts us to allow our bodies to become not only a site of liberation (for ourselves) but also the site in which faith manifests itself in love in service to the neighbor which is glory to God.

The juxtaposition of “under law” and “under grace” is important. Harkening back to what was discussed in chapter 4 of Romans, the believer is no longer under the law but under grace because the believer is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Thus, as we serve our neighbor it is done out of faith manifesting in love for the neighbor as the neighbor rather than as a means to fulfill the law—this would be putting primacy of place to the law.[3] So, Paul exhorts us to bring our body (the outer nature, corporate and personal) in line with our souls (inner nature, corporate and personal) in service to the neighbor for the neighbor’s sake which does, in fact, bring glory to God. As we know from Jesus, to love the neighbor is to love God and to love God is to love the neighbor, and not merely abstractly or confessionally but in practical reality, materially (orthopraxy born of orthodoxy). Thus we love as we have first been loved.

Once again, though, Paul reminds us about our intention: do we allow our limbs to be used as weapons of injustice just because we can? Should we use our limbs as weapons of injustice by focusing on ourselves and our adherence to the law at the expense of the neighbor? Should we just ignore our limbs, pretending they are useless considering we’re justified by faith? (This is another way to serve injustice through our inactivity toward justice.) Μὴ γένοιτο! For Paul, this intention leads to death; to serve the law for the law’s sake keeps one in the grip of sin, which is (bluntly) being turned in on the self. If you are trying to make yourself right or justified or good through obedience to the law, you are of no use to your neighbor because you cannot see them through the demand of the law and desire to make yourself right by your actions. Being concerned with only yourself is not freedom because you cannot be free when you are trying to serve the law for the law’s sake because you are held captive by the law and thus also by condemnation of sin; you are stuck (dead) in your trespasses. You might as well be dead man walking.[4]

However, says Paul, we were recreated in the event of justification by faith in God (trusting in God and believing God’s promises) through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. So, where we were once slaves to the law, sin, and (thus) death, we are now slaves to promise, righteousness, and life (Rom 6:17-18). However, this does not mean we are without the law (lawless, τὴν ἀνομίαν), rather the law is in our service, in service to love and not the other way around. We must use the law to guide our bodies, to bring them in alignment to our inner nature, and to spread God’s love, life and liberation to our neighbor,[5] especially those who are still held captive in unjust and death dealing structures, systems, institutions (visible and invisible), and ideologies. This is Christian sanctification: to love God and to love the neighbor in freedom and responsibility to the benefit of the cosmos.[6]

Conclusion

I will close with a quote from Gustavo Gutierrez’s text A Theology of Liberation,

…St. Paul asserts not only that Christ liberated us; he also tells us that he did it in order that we might be free. Free for what? Free to love. ‘In the language of the Bible,’ writes Bonhoeffer, ‘freedom is not something [one] has for [themself] but something [they have] for others….It is not a possession, a presence, an object,…but a relationship and nothing else. In truth, freedom is a relationship between two persons. Being free means ‘being free for the other,’ because the other has bound me to [them]. Only in relationship with the other am I free.’ The freedom to which we are called presupposes the going out of oneself, the breaking down of our selfishness and of all the structures that support our selfishness; the foundation of this freedom is openness to others. The fullness of liberation—a free gift from Christ—is communion with God and with other [people].[7]

Gutierrez, Theology of Liberation

[1] Remember that the word translated as “sin” can also mean “missing the mark”.

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[3] LW 25, 316. “For those people understand the expression ‘to be under the Law’ as being the same as having a law according to which one must live. But the apostle understands the words ‘to be under the Law’ as equivalent to not fulfilling the Law, as being guilty of disobeying the Law, as being a debtor and a transgressor, in that the Law has the power of accusing and damning a person and lording it over him, but it does not have the power to enable him to satisfy the Law or overcome it. And thus as long as the Law rules, sin also has dominion and holds man captive.”

[4] LW 25, 317. “Sin is the sting or power of death, through which death is powerful and holds dominion, as above in chapter 5:12 ff.: ‘death through sin’ etc. But the Law is the power or strength of sin, through which sin remains and holds dominion. And from this dominion of the Law and sin no one can be liberated except through Christ…”

[5] LW 25, 317. “For the wisdom of the flesh is opposed to the Word of God, but the Word of God is immutable and insuperable. Therefore God, but the Word of God is immutable and insuperable. Therefore it is necessary that the wisdom of the flesh be changed and that it give up its form and take on the form of the Word. This takes place when through faith it takes itself captive and strips off its own crown, conforms itself to the word, and believes the word to be true and itself to be false.”

[6] LW 25, 321. “For through the terms ‘sanctification’ and ‘cleanness’ he is trying to convey the same concept, namely, that the body should be pure, but not with jut any find of purity, but with that which comes from within, form the spirit of sanctifying faith.”

[7] Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation. Trans Sister Caridad Inda and john Eagleson. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1973. Ed 5th. Original: Teologia de la liberacion, Perspectivas Lima: CEP, 1971. (p. 36

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Go and Live!

Psalm 86:10, 16-17 For you are great; you do wondrous things; and you alone are God. Turn to me and have mercy upon me; give your strength to your servant… Show me a sign of your favor … you, God, have helped me and comforted me.

Introduction

In seminary, when I was given the opportunity to assist a professor with their teaching and grading, I was often struck by how many students were focused on eliminating sin. So many conclusions to systematic and pastoral papers ended with exhortations toward living sinless to the glory of God—exhortation directed at both the author and the audience of the paper. I never commented on these exhortational confessions decorating double-spaced, four-page papers, but I remember being very aware of their presence and their frequency. It struck me as odd because weren’t we exhorted by both Jesus and Paul to live, but this focus on the cessation of sin seemed the opposite of life, it felt like—and I wasn’t even that far into reading Luther at this point—a return to incurvatus in se, being curved in on oneself. In other words, it felt like the antithesis of living and life; it felt like stagnation and death.

I’m not without accusation and guilt. I spent my earliest years as a Christian focused on being sinless so I could be, once and for all, holy and righteous, perfect like my heavenly parent is perfect. The result didn’t make me relate to my neighbor more, but less; it didn’t make me love God for God’s sake, but less and worse: it made God a means to my end of being “sinless”. It didn’t make me freer in Christ, but less; it didn’t make me more dependent on the Spirit but less. It made me less loving and more judgmental. With sinlessness as my focus, I was not liberated from but enslaved to sin.

When Paul declares, “In this way also you, you consider yourselves to be dead truly to sin/missing the mark, and [truly] living to God in Christ Jesus” we must put the emphasis on the right syllable. Keeping in mind what we’ve covered so far, we must proceed with these two things in mind: 1. The Christian is justified by faith clinging to the promise of God and not by works of the law because the law cannot be satiated and will not grant the reward unless done perfectly; and 2. Because the Christian is justified by faith (alone) they have peace with God, with their neighbor, and with themselves because they are no longer trying to serve the law as the mediator. This then leads us to what Paul says in in Romans 6…

Romans 6:1b-11

Shall we persist in sin so that grace might abound? May it not come to be! Whoever died to sin, how can we still live in [sin]? Or do you not know that as many of us were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?…For [the death] he died, he died to sin once for all; now [the life] he lives, he lives to God. In this way also you, you consider yourselves to be dead truly to sin/missing the mark, and [truly] living to God in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 6:1b-3, 10-11)[1]

About this passage, Martin Luther writes, “We are in sin until the end of our life.”[2] Christians will continue to sin and miss the mark their entire lives; you cannot avoid that fact, no matter how much missing the mark brings pain and suffering. So, when Paul exhorts his audience not to persist in sin, it is not with the intention of not having sin, but not intentionally seeking it out with the goal to demonstrate how far being justified by faith and grace will go. Because, for Paul, such a mindset is not liberation from sin, but the very return to being controlled by it, being controlled by your actions, thus ultimately still giving the law too much power and authority over you. It’s less about the deeds of sin and more about the orientation of the believer in relationship to sin thus to the law. If it’s all about not sinning, about not missing the mark (ever), then we are all back at square one: consumed with our deeds and our actions and, thus, the law. If you focus on your sins—your individual actions and deeds that break the law (either God’s or your own)—you are still being controlled by the law and are not free. Μὴ γένοιτο!

Paul is telling us here in Romans 6 that we are truly! liberated from sin unto life. So, returning to a singular focus on sins, on our deeds and actions, is a return to the tyranny of the law—something the law is not supposed to have. So, what does it mean that we should not persist in sin or that we are dead to sin? It means that we are dead to sin, as in liberated from the controlling accusation and condemnation of sin because it’s been dealt with in Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Because, as Paul has already told us in Romans 4, “[Jesus] was handed over on account of our trespasses and was raised up for the sake of our justification” (v.25). This then is the foundation of our life and liberation from death and from sin/trespasses; if we have been baptized into Christ’s death, then we are resurrected into his life (our justification). Said another way, “the death he died, he died to sin once for all; now [the life] he lives, he lives to God.” To focus our energy on our sin is to deny Christ this once-for-all-ness and to declare his sacrifice as deficient or, even, non-existent because it still depends on the law and on us. If this is so, then even as we live, we are dead because sin’s power and control live on, commanding all our energy and attention. [3] We are dead in our trespasses.

Rather, says Paul, it’s all on Christ, so…Go! Live! Go and live neither by pressing into sin, because that is still sin controlling you and thus is still death, nor by ignoring it and pretending you don’t have sin or you don’t miss the mark, for that is also not a living liberated but living controlled by sin thus death. Rather, go and live knowing you are going to miss the mark; and (good news!) when you do be sure to admit you’re fault and error, seek forgiveness, but just keep moving, keep loving, keep living, keep liberating. Go and live, live like those who are liberated from the oppression of the wrath of the law, of sin, of being curved in on yourself; live like those who are justified by faith and those who have peace with God thus with their neighbor and thus with themselves. Just live. Do you not know that you are alive in Christ and dead to sin?[4]You have died to sin because you have died with Christ; you have been raised unto life because you have been given life in Christ to live; why are you still consumed with death, with sin?[5] Why are you acting like the dead (controlled by sin) when you have been recreated to be the living (controlled by the loving, living, liberating Spirit of God)?[6]  As Paul writes later in Romans, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to again return to fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption, by which we cry, ‘Abba Father’” (8:15).

Conclusion

Two comments by way of closing.

First: You will miss the mark (sin). This knowledge that you are going to miss the mark (sin) is not an excuse to trample about without care for your neighbor. Just because you are justified by faith (fully and truly) does not mean you get to isolate yourself off from your neighbor, treating them as inferior to you and your needs. Too often people have used their faith to prop themselves up and above their neighbor, making themselves more important than their neighbor, and using their neighbor as a means to an end. But this isn’t liberation; this is as much enslavement to sin as is being obsessed with it. Liberation always includes the neighbor; it is never for you alone. For the one who can see and serve the neighbor without losing themselves in that action is the one who truly is free and liberated.

Second (is like the first): You will miss the mark (sin). You are not above it or below it. But if this fact becomes our focus, it will become a big stumbling block hindering both our ability to love God and to love our neighbor. We will never love perfectly because we can’t; plus, what even is perfect love? Isn’t the most perfect love the love that just wants to love for no other reason than just because (without a why or wherefore)? But if we become consumed with loving perfectly, living perfectly, acting perfectly we will slowly close ourselves into our cages, the same ones we’ve been liberated from. So, we live as messy and odd and weird and awkward and clunky as we can; but the goal is to live as loved and liberated human beings in the world, oriented toward bringing God’s love, life, and liberation to all people.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[2] LW 25, 308.

[3] LW 25, 311. I’m applying the following quote with a bit of demythologizing, “The other kind of death is eternal and very terrible. It is the death of the damned, where sin and the sinner are not the ones to die, while man is saved, but man dies, while sin lives on and continues forever.”

[4] LW 25, 311. “Because for death to be killed means that death will not return, and ‘to take captivity captive means that captivity will never return, a concept which cannot be expressed through an affirmative assertion.”

[5] LW 25, 314. “The meaning is that we must undergo this spiritual death only once. For whoever dies thus lives for all eternity. Therefore we must not return to our sin in order to die to sin again.”

[6] LW 25, 315. “He has Christ, who dies no more; therefore he himself dies no more, but rather he lives with Christ forever. Hence also we are baptized only once, by which we gain the life of Christ, even though we often fall and rise again.”

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