Tag: New Creatures

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?: New Creatures by God’s Grace

“‘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

Continuing with our journey through Romans, we find ourselves in the first half of chapter 6. Here, Paul is addressing claims coming from the Roman church, specifically claims that if believers sin more than God’s grace abounds more. Paul is clear here, while we are justified by faith apart from works, we must not intentionally pursue sinful behaviors that drag and disrupt God’s revolution of the divine mission of love, life, and liberation in the world for the well-being of the neighbor to the glory of God. (Plus, we will have enough unintentional sin in our lives, we don’t need to pursue it!) We are, according to Paul, new creatures born of the waters of Baptism and are now defined by love, life, and liberation, and therefore voluntarily re-yoking ourselves to that which is indifference, that which is death, that which is captivity is not only anathema but also cut off.  

Romans 6:1b-11

Paul begins with a refutation of what is considered (by some scholars[ii]) to be a quotation from some at Rome, What then will we say? May we continue to sin, with the result that grace might superabound? Hell/ck no! We who have died to sin, how will we still live in it? (vv1-2). The question Paul asks in return is the driving theme of the chapter. It is also, especially for us, a crucial question for those who are justified by faith apart from works. Rather than the event of justification being a license to intentionally sin, it is an exhortation to live a new life. It is a gift given to be enjoyed—this is what the incarnate word is. Remember, back in chapter four, Paul gave a crystal-clear explanation of the gospel summarized by the events of Christ’s death and resurrection, [Jesus] was handed over for the sake of our trespasses and was raised for the sake of our acquittal/being pronounced justified/righteous (4:25). If we claim to believe in Christ, then we’ve come to the end of ourselves and have entered union with God by the power of the Holy Spirit. To intentionally return to the behaviors of the kingdom of humanity is to deny this belief and faith, it is to deny Christ and what Christ achieved for us because it is contrary to the very grace of God.[iii] In a sense, the claim Paul refutes makes God’s grace a human endeavor; for Paul, this is a μὴ γένοιτο! In the economy of God’s activity in the world and, especially, toward humanity, emphasis cannot fall on humans sinning to bring God’s grace. Rather, it must fall on God’s gracious activity in giving us God’s grace. Those who have been saved from the life of the dead are ushered into the life of the living and there’s no going back and certainly no human-centered way to make God’s grace abound more than it already is in Christ by the power of the Spirit. This is why Paul can then write,

Or are you ignorant that whosoever of us was baptized into Christ Jesus we were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him through the baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from death by the glory of Abba God, even as also we might walk in the newness of life (vv3-4).

Paul then explains more,

For if we have become grown together with [Jesus] in the likeness of his death, but also we will be [grown together with him in the likeness of his] resurrection. Knowing this that our old person was crucified together with [Christ] so that the body of sin might be abolished, so that we are no longer a slave to sin, for the one who dies has been declared to be righteous from sin (vv5-7).

Paul anchors the believer’s new life not in the old life and person of the kingdom of humanity, but in the new person who is of the reign of God and who identifies (by faith) with Christ’s death and resurrection. This new person is born from the trifold dipping of Christian baptism, marking the fullness of the invested Godhead and our identification with Christ in the tomb.[iv] For Paul, this is all the believer needs to cling to. The believer does not need to take matters into their own hands and cause God’s grace to manifest; God’s grace is (already) made manifest in their lives (in its fullness) because they believe. Now, it is also shared out and into the world as they proceed to live into their resurrected new life and leave the old person and body of sin to the kingdom of humanity (like: “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead” Mt. 8:22, Lk. 9:60). These ones are grown together with (bonded to) Christ,[v] just as they were previously bonded to and grown together with sin and the old person. Therefore, they cannot return to the old way, old life, and old person. Again, Paul is refuting any notion that believers must return to sin to make God’s grace abound; the believer causes God’s grace to abound in the world as they live into their new life by the power of the Spirit and by faith in Christ and in union with God.[vi] (But they cannot cause God’s grace to become more present in their own lives than it already is by returning to sin.) Thus, believers become midwives of God’s grace by God’s grace and are encouraged and exhorted to go further and deeper into the world bringing God’s love and grace to all, especially the oppressed. Anyone who identifies with Christ by faith and baptism has identified with Christ in his death and will identify with him in his resurrection; herein is our justification: for the one who dies is declared righteous from sin. Sin is no longer in control and no longer boss (so, too, the law[vii]); God is now in charge of this new life, and Paul exhorts the Romans to live as such going forward and not backward. Saying,

Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Knowing that Christ, being raised from death, dies no longer, death no longer rules him. For he, he died, once for all he, he died to sin; but he, he lives, he, he lives to God. And in this way, you, you reckon yourselves to be dead to sin and living to/for God in Christ Jesus (vv8-11).

Conclusion

For Paul,[viii] Christ is the sacrament[ix]; it is Christ with whom we identify in both the waters of baptism and in the broken bread of the eucharist. It is not that water and bread are significant in themselves, but through them we come into contact with the dead and risen Christ; in partaking in these sacraments we identify in Christ’s three-day death and in his body broken; and as we identify so here, we can and will identify with Christ in his new life and bodily resurrection (today and tomorrow, present and future).[x] Further, to identify with Christ in his death—sacramentally and spiritually—means that we, too, like Christ our elder brother, are caused to be dead to sin, as in, sin no longer has dominion over us,[xi] eternal death,[xii] too, is rendered impotent for those who believe. (Because of Christ, death is dead, captivity is held captive, and indifference has met is own cold fate.[xiii],[xiv]) Sin’s stain and its consequence, death, are forever removed from the life of the believer;[xv] they are new creatures[xvi] (forever and daily[xvii]) no longer defined by sin but by God’s grace, no longer under the dominion of sin but under the reign of Christ.[xviii] No longer defined by death, but by life; no longer defined by captivity, but liberation; no longer defined by indifference but by love.[xix] We do not need to return…Nay! We cannot return to the sinful existence of the old person, of the kingdom of humanity; [xx] for God’s grace enters in anew every morning with God’s mercy.

Thus, we walk in all this newness, on the move because the Christian life is on the move because it is defined by Christ the gospel, defined by God and God’s Holy Spirit all of whom are always on the move looking for and seeking the beloved.[xxi]As those who identify with Christ by faith, we also identify with whom he identified: the lost, the unheard, the unvoiced, the ignored, the pushed off and pushed aside, the ones the society of the kingdom of humanity has deemed unworthy of love.

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

[ii] Martin Luther Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia (1515/1516) LW 25 Ed. Hilton C. Oswald (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1972), 50. “…as falsifiers understand the passage, when they say, ‘Let us do evil,’ that is, let us commit sin, ‘That good may come’ (Rom. 3:8), that is, that grace may abound.”

[iii] LW 25: 50. “By no means, because this idea is absolutely contrary to the work of grace,..”

[iv] LW 25: 50-51. “…the threefold dipping of Baptism signifies the three-day death period and the burial of Christ, into Christ Jesus, that is, by faith in Christ Jesus…”

[v] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 108. “The kind of participation that baptism makes possible is an incorporation into Christ that is a secure joining for a thorough sharing, a kind of bonding.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 107. “For Paul, baptism is s a clear sign of leaving the dominion of sin and entering the dominion of grace.”

[vii] LW 25: 308. “But he over whom sin reigns, no matter how he resists sin, is still under the Law and not under grace.”

[viii] LW 25: 310. “thus in this passage the apostle is speaking of the death and resurrection of Christ insofar as they refer to the sacrament, but not to the example.”

[ix] LW 25: 309. “For having put on our mortal flesh and dying only in it and rising only in it, now only in it He joins these things together for us, for in this flesh He became a sacrament for the inner man and an example for the outward man.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 108. “By being buried with Jesus, we are made participants not only in his death but also in his resurrection. To be united with him in death means also being united with him in resurrection (6:5).”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 107. “[Paul] describes sin’s power as ruling power; sin has dominion over us, enslaving us to its purposes and exercising influence over us as a kind of lordship. When we are under the lordship of sin, we are bound to submit to its influence.”

[xii] LW 25: 310. “Eternal death is also twofold. The one kind is good, very good.it is the death of sin and the death of death, by which the soul is released and separated from sin and the body is separated from corruption and through grace and glory is joined to the living God. This is death in the most proper sense of the word, for in all other forms of death something remains that is mixed with life, but not in this kind of death, where there is the purest life alone, because it is eternal life.”

[xiii] LW 25: 311. “Just as the death of death means to act against death, which is the same things as life, so the sin of sin is righteousness.”

[xiv] 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.”

[xv] LW 25: 310. “This is the way sin dies; and likewise the sinner, when he is justified, because sin will not return again for all eternity, as the apostles says here [v9]…”

[xvi] LW 25: 313. “The term ‘old man’ describes what kind of person is born of Adam, not according to his nature but according to the defect of his nature. For his nature is good, but the defect is evil.”

[xvii] 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.”

[xviii] Lancaster, Romans, 107-108. “Those who have died to sin because they have been baptized into Jesus’ death. By participating in the death of Jesus, the follower of Jesus is dying to the lordship of sin and accepting the lordship of Christ.”

[xix] Lancaster, Romans, 108-109. “Dying to sin means that a person dies to an old way of life, and participating in the death and resurrection of Jesus means that a person enters a new way of life. The one who was crucified conquered death, and because we share in his victory, we are no longer enslaved to sin….The proper commitment to the new dominion in which we are privileged to live is to give up sin and live for God.”

[xx] Lancaster, Romans, 107. “To follow Jesus Christ means leaving the dominion of sin and living in the dominion of grace. If that is the case, then the follower of Jesus can no longer do the bidding of sin. By changing dominions, a person has changed lords and loyalties.”

[xxi] Lancaster, Romans, 109. “…new life in Christ is not static…Rather to walk in newness of life means to be on the move, to be ever attentive to what it means to live to God and to exercise our allegiance daily.”

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