The Happy Dead
Romans: The Gospel Great and Glorious • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 33:54
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What legacies have you recieved from your families? Your parents your grand parents. I don’t mean old houses cars or heirlooms. I mean legacies that matter.
good legacies- family stories and traditions. skills, passions, and talents.
memories and purposes.
Bad: Wounds and coping mechanisms. patterns of conflict, attack or passive agressiveness. suceptibility to addictions and broken relationships.
Since we had no choice in our families we have no choice in our legacy from them. We have to take the good with the bad. Be thankful for the good and to strive to be forgiving of the bad.
After all there is one legacy that we have all inherited from our ever so great grand- pappy Adam.
Our legacy from Adam. Bondage to brokeness. A slavery to sin.
THanks to Adam Our parents didn’t have a choice.. Any more than we did. .And rebelious hearts, selfishness and pride came quite easy to them as they do for us.
Remember last week we talked about that! How sin is a family affair, and a family buisness for humanity.
But Paul says that something new has entered the picture.. Jesus.
And for those that look to Jesus-
Romans 5- We are Dead to Adam and Alive in Christ. We have a new family new clothing!
No longer paupers we are now princes.. THIS IS Official!
But that change in our family name and title doesn’t change the legacy of adam in our lives and in our hearts.
Sin is still a profound problem- Even if it no longer leads to death. Sin in the life of a christian still has real and terrible consquences. Sin causes us to hurt people that we are called to love. Sin causes us to hurt ourselves and hate ourselves when we are loved by God. And most of all sin spoils our happiness in Christ. It returns us to the garden where we find ourselves hiding from God Rather than walking with him in peace.
God has so much more for his beloved than a sin can ever offer.
Reverse my fair lady.
In this beloved musical, pompous phonetics professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) is so sure of his abilities that he takes it upon himself to transform a Cockney working-class girl into someone who can pass for a cultured member of high society. His subject turns out to be the lovely Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), who agrees to speech lessons to improve her job prospects.
Like Elizawe have been taken in, and like her we have additudes, and patterns of speach and behavior that are not acceptable to our new station in life. But unlike her we are not told that we can have security only if become change everything wbout ourselves. Rather we are told that we have complete security now! See the first few verses in
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
This is all very good news because while it was a bit hard for Eliza to change her accent. It is darned near impossible for us to leave all our sinful habits fears and follies behind us completely in this life.
Which is why Paul began these 4 chapers on sanctification with a refection on the promise that we have in Christ. And the station that we have in the family of God- not as outsiders. But as children of the King.
So let me reiterate. Christian do not be afraid. You are not in danger of being cast out for your struggle with sin. God has called you his own, adopted you and promised you victory in the end!
But that leads to a real question. Why Struggle at all. Why not just let sin win so that God grace can be all the greater?
Well that is what paul is going to deal with in our text for today.
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.
Paul begins by saying that sinning so that grace may increase. Is madness. Senseless and foolish.
Then he explains why that would be insane. And he offers an alternative plan for us.
Whyis is madness for the Christian... our new reality in In christ.
sealed with Christ in our baptism. We say that the sacrements- baptism and the lords supper are signs of God covenants and Seals of his grace. This is where we get this idea. Christ has done the work. Defeated Death and risen from the grave. but Jesus didn’t do that just for himself. He did it for us. So that you who by faith believe in Jesus are joined with him. in his life, death and resurrection.
In his death and in his resurrection.
We were slaves to sin. but that slave died. And while sin lost a slave we were ressurected in Christ!
And in Christ We are no longer slaves to sin.
No longer under the threat of death
not becasue we have gained new life on our own but we are connected to the life of christ. His blood flows through our veins his life is our life.
I like the image of a blood transfusion. Jesus has saved us from death with his blood. but this wasn’t just a one time donation.. We need him. We are still hooked into him. His blood, his presence and his love sustain us.
So in summary Paul says that having been saved we have to change how we see ourselves.
So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Paul is saying that the we need to remember that we have been reborn. The old us was a slave to sin- but that is dead- and the new us is alive and freed from that misery. We have a new life and a new family in Jesus.
And accordingly live that Way!
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Now Paul moves from explaining the context of our new condition in Christ to start barking orders..
If you are dead to Sin. No longer its slave than
Don’t go back into slavery- DOn’t listen to the voice of Sin.
Don’t Show up to work back in the mines of Immorality.
Instead remember to Show up for work daily with Jesus. Your hands your feet, Your mouths they are non longer instruments of evil. God has another plan for them.
They are to be Intruments of righteousness! To do God’s work.
Let’s stretch that clumsy metaphor of being hooked up to an IV with Jesus. Remember We have new life in Jesus. Not apart from him His spirit dwells within us!
So Imagine showing up back at the slave camp every morning as though you were still a slave- but even worse you are showing up with your rescuer standing by your side!
It is a horrible tragic thing for you to bend your back in miserable slavery to sin when the one who died to free you is at your side.
So don’t do it..
Instead of taking him to where you used to work Paul offers a better alternative! Go with Jesus and learn about the family buisness of righteousness. Learn how to love with his love. To comfort the broken hearted. To calm the anxious spirit and declare the freedom of Christ in a world bound by sin.
And if that idea scares you. If you feel overwhelmed by the idea of going to a new work place with such an important job. That I understand. I feel the same way. But what I need to remember is that Jesus is with me every step of the way. The work might be new for me, and hard for me. and against my every instinct. But Jesus Goes with me his spirit fills me. And his word guides me.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
So in summary as we reflect on what Paul has said so far about Christians and sin.
Three thoughts for the Christian
Jesus has rescued us from sin slavery and its death sentence.
Jesus is our new life.. And he is ever with us.
Victory over sin means not just going to work at the mines of immortality it means learning the new family buisness. Filling our lives with the persuit of righteousness and the work of our savior.
To be a christian means to daily embrace the fact that we are the happy dead. And though we are dead we will forever live with Jesus.