St Peter and St Paul, Langham, 10.30 Morning Prayer
Romans 6.1-11
A flat pack you ordered from Amazon has just arrived. ‘Made in China’ it says. You find the instruction sheet. Your heart sinks. It’s incomprehensible. Each word is an English word, but the way the Chinese have strung them together it is not English – as you or I know it! You have no idea what it is saying.
Well as a teenager I remember someone first suggesting to me I should read Paul’s letter to the Romans. And I had to read it in the 17th century language of the Authorised or King James version. It was a bit like the Chinese instructions. Each word was English, but strung together in such density they were incomprehensible.
Even in a modern translation as we have just read this morning – what’s going on?
And life is made no easier by the Church of England. In setting Bible readings for the year, it has to divide Romans up into chunks:
From the beginning of June to the middle of September each Sunday this year we will have a chunk of Romans read during our Sunday service.
Now the first eight chapters of Romans is a step by step guide to why it is so fantastic to be a Christian and the wonderful advantages we have through Christ. But it is a continuous piece of logic. Dividing it up makes it harder to find our way around. So if we parachute ourselves into the middle of the argument as we have this morning it is even harder to work it all out.
Today’s reading Romans chapter 6 opens with
6 What then are we to say?
Now we need to have read Chapters 1-5, to make sense of What then are we to say?
A bit like watching a 8 episode thriller on Netflix and starting at episode 6. What’s happened so far? What’s going on? What do all these technical terms mean?
Romans is intense and complicated. Blink and you miss the thread of the argument. Paul obviously has a big brain, and he is a clear thinker – But remember he is not just some remote academic, not just an ‘ivory tower’ guy. Remember he has also walked the walk – after his conversion on the Damascus Road spent the rest of his life travelling and preaching, and establishing Xtian communities all over the near East – take hardship, beating, death for the gospel. And he still thought it important to write Romans.
So Paul is extraordinary, but Christianity is of course for ordinary people. Christ did not die for clever or academic people only. You do not need A levels or a degree to be a Christian. Nor did Jesus die for action people only.
This means there must be a way into Romans for ordinary you and ordinary me. So let’s go for it.
We need to know the headlines of what Paul has said so for. Especially what he said in Chapter 5. Then we can understand what he is reacting to, when he opens chapter 6 with What then are we to say?
So I’ll try to summarise Romans 1-5 in about two minutes! The story so far:
- Sin spoils creation, spoils us, and gets between us and God
All that failure, self interest, indifference to God, insensitivity to others, thoughtlessness, cruelty of words, bad temper, all those unsavoury bits that no one can know of the inside of our minds, hearts and souls of which we are thoroughly ashamed. Which we pretend God cannot see since we can much of the time hide them from each other. And not just individual ‘sins’ but the whole human state of being sinful.
- Because God is holy, we cannot pretend that sin does not matter. It needs to be dealt with. We need to be right with God. And that is what Paul means when he says we need to be ‘righteous’ – right with God.
- Or to use another ‘Paul word’ We need to be ‘justified’ – which means just as if we’d never sinned – ‘justified’
- The way we become righteous , the way we are justified is not by trying hard. No – we are justified by faith. By faith in what? In what God has done for us. And Chapter 5 tells what He has done
- 5:8 God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. We have been justified by his blood. That is what has made us right with God
- We could not do it for ourselves. Rom 5:5 when we were still powerless Xt died for the ungodly
Paul describes this as having access to God’s Grace – which is best understood as God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense.
And that means we have Peace 5: 1 Peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ
Job done. A wonderful job done by Xt for us. End of story. Ah – it’s not quite as simple as that.
Some people have said to themselves: ‘I have a promise from God that my sins are always forgiven. So if I still sin and let God down I can be pretty chilled about that because I know that God will forgive me. In fact it’s a good thing because every time I sin and need to ask and receive God’s forgiveness, it is enabling God’s wonderful goodness and grace to be in action again for me. Is that what the cross was for? To free us from sin means that we can just get on with a bit of sinning, and God will forgive us. Now that feels a bit of a dodgy argument. And Paul thinks so to!
6 What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 2 By no means!
Then to help us understand this properly Paul introduces a new phrase.
2 By no means! How can we who ‘died to sin’ go on living in it?
It is not the only thing in this chapter, but it is the ‘big idea’.
2 How can we who died to sin go on living in it?
7For whoever has died is freed from sin
11So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
What does that mean: ‘dead to sin’? ‘free from sin’?
Does it mean that Xtians will never sin again – dead to sin? Free from sin?
Let’s apply a reality check. I won’t ask for a show of hands, but I assume you are all like me – and you still mess up – often. Letting yourself down, letting others down, and most importantly letting God down. We all need the forgiveness of God day by day.
Or perhaps ‘free from sin’ means free from temptation. Another reality check says ‘no’ – and so does Paul! He writes about temptation as a reality in Chapter 7.
Perhaps ‘free from sin’ means – we’re free from hang ups about sin – we don’t need to have all that guilt about it. Sin is not such a problem any more – it’s a bit of an old fashioned Old Testament idea – it no longer has any grip over us.
We’re modern people –after all Christ died for us – so even if we do sin, Christ will forgive us – we do something wrong, God will just forgive us.
Ah, but sin remains a very big deal when we face a Holy God who knew sin must be dealt with. Such a big deal that God was prepared to send His Son to die to deal with it.
Perhaps we are not really free at all – perhaps Paul has got it wrong?
And of course that is what many people think. They will tell you that Christians are the least free people. That we are all buttoned up by rules and restrictions, a narrow old fashioned code of conduct [the Ten Commandments] that are not suited to modern life
That we are not free to enjoy the best of life, not free to enjoy what life has to offer.
Well…. We’ve looked at are plenty of things it isn’t
So what then is this freedom from sin that Paul talks about? And w hat is being dead to sin?
I’d like to talk to you about icebergs. I know you all think I have taken leave of my senses on the longest day of the year with a gorgeous warm and sunny June day ahead of us, and a heatwave looming. But I do want to talk about icebergs, so…. please bear with me.
I had a colleague who was a Titanic buff. Titanic which sank when it hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage in 1912. Long before the film ‘Titanic’ came out – my friend knew everything about the Titanic– he was obsessed by the Titanic. He knew all about it, about why it sank, about the mistakes were made in its design, mistakes by the captain and crew, how they could have avoided the iceberg.
You may also remember that three years earlier, in 1909 there was the famous Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic which went badly wrong. – they were delayed sailing home in the late summer – the icebergs gradually glued themselves together and became pack ice – solid – the ship trapped – struggles futile -they had to walk away from the stranded ship and they had an epic journey of survival. They could not wait for the spring, they would have starved to death, but if they could have, the thaw would set in – stranglehold broken – move to warmer freer water – free to go where you want, Still dangers – icebergs and the Titanic reminds us how powerful they can be – often invisible dangers – there is always more of an iceberg below the water line than above.
We can still see the power of the ice – which dominated, controlled the ocean when it was pack ice. But it is now fragmented into avoidable icebergs
Paul is saying that before we became Christians, before we accepted Christ’s death to make us righteous and justify us, we were completely in the pack ice of sin. Trapped.
But now we have a new state of life – we are no longer in the pack ice, no longer utterly trapped by sin. We are dead to sin. The individual sins and misdeeds – the icebergs – are still there. But as Christians we are free in the open seas. The pack ice can no longer entrap us, we are free to live life.
Who freed us from the pack ice?
Did we do it ourselves? Of course NOT
Did our friends come and dig us out? Of course NOT
Did some random force of nature melt the sin ice? NO
Did we just grow up and realise sin is an old fashioned hang-up limiting our freedom? NO
It was Jesus Christ who freed us and gave us new life:
Rom 5.8 God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Xt died for us
Rom 5:5 when we were still powerless Xt died for the ungodly
Rom 6:6 – our old self was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be done away with– not a wishful think- but a reality …
Only because we have accepted His death can we be free from the pack ice, free on the ocean…
But there are still icebergs of sin out there. And we need to think about practical iceberg avoidance. Avoiding putting ourselves in situations where temptation will be especially tough. That will be different for each of us.
If for example you know that certain sorts of advertisements tempt you to jealousy and greed – turn them off
If you know that watching certain sorts of films on TV tempt you – don’t watch them
If you know that chatting to certain people tempts you into cruel gossip don’t get yourself there.
Avoid those things which will push us towards dishonesty and lying
Beware dodgy financial schemes
Beware of interest in material things which can turn to covetousness.
That is just Christian common sense for us all– practical iceberg avoidance.
And if perhaps you feel you are at a time in your life when there are no longer icebergs? Be concerned, your awareness of sin has been dulled.
But do not just be preoccupied with missing specific icebergs
Rather rejoice that you are out of the pack-ice, free on the ocean already.
When Paul talks about being dead to sin – he is NOT talking about individual sins, individual misdeeds [individual icebergs] .But about a state of life – we are dead to sin, we are free, we are out of the pack ice.
Not a dream, not a struggle, not a vague hope. It is a FACT – we are free.
Not just negative but positive Rom 6:11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ Jesus
Alive, life as it should be lived, life at its best.
Will there ever be a time when there are no icebergs?
Yes – in heaven -when there will be no more struggle with sin – and final total freedom.
Until then there is still a paradox. We are free on the ocean – but the icebergs remain . But we are not trapped- we are free to sail away from the icebergs, to go nowhere near them so that even the hidden ice below the waterline cannot bring us down.
Rejoice – because we’re free from the pack ice of sin, free from sin and dead to sin, and with God’s help and some good common sense we can go on avoiding the icebergs
Till one day in heaven there will be no icebergs at all .
AMEN