Romans 6:1b-11 (NRSV)
Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For whoever has died is freed from sin. 8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Romans 6:1b-11 has the theme of baptism, sin, death, life, and being “in Christ.” Paul is facing the harsh reality that human beings find it difficult to change. In fact, they may find it difficult to recognize they need to change. Even when they know they must change for their own good, they will not do so. Paul is being the spiritual healer here, offering the divine prescription for what ails humanity.
Paul begins his discussion of the difference Christ can make in our lives. It will take an event, a moment, in which we separate ourselves from what we are now to what our destiny is in Christ. Obviously, the coming of Christ as the promise of the eschatological destiny of humanity is not fully a reality in the present. Humanity still wrestles with the reality of Adam (5:12ff). Sin and death are realities in Adam. Humanity continues to make the decision Adam did in turning away from God and therefore the source of its life. Adam has become our prison. Humanity is in bondage to sin. The sin of Adam finds a reflection in the sin of each human being. However, participation in eschatological life is a reality for those in Christ. God takes our sin seriously, which we can see in the bloody, expiatory event of the cross that averts the eschatological wrath and judgment of God. God remains committed to humanity in divine love, which the cross also shows. Christ offers humanity a new possibility. Christ holds before us the possibility of reconstituting humanity toward eschatological life. Baptism is a sign of the moment or event in our lives that signals our needed transformation. Faith and grace that we find together in baptism unites the believer with Christ. Humanity naturally unites to Adam but must make a choice to unite with Christ. The believer participates in the fate and destiny of Christ. Participating in the death of Christ releases one from the destiny of humanity in Adam, while participating in the resurrection of Christ unites one with the redeemed and reconciled life of the risen Christ. Most of us have seen western movies with the poster: Wanted Dead or Alive. A poster for what Paul is advocating would read, Wanted: Dead and Alive. In this sense, the death of Christ is an expiatory offering, transferring our sin to the innocent Jesus. We have no way to make amends with God for our rebellion. The death of Christ is the offering provided by God that set aside the Old Testament sacrificial system.[1] This fact reminds us of the deep connection between Christian theology and its Jewish context. Humanity cannot liberate itself from sin and death, but union with Christ shifts the focus from our efforts to the power of the risen Christ at work in us. Yet, our today is a life of tension between the pattern set by Adam of turning from God and the pattern set by Christ of turning toward God. Truly, the more graphically we see the depths of human sin, we see the heights to which grace lifts us. Of course, the point of this grace is to liberate us from sin and death. Faith and grace do not lead us to indifference regarding the plight of humanity or the battle each of us face. Far from surrendering to Adam, sin, and death, we look forward with faith to our hoped for transformation because of participation in Christ. The humility of faith will lead to a life devoted to love and virtue. Will and rationality continue to orient us toward Adam, but faith and grace orient us toward Christ and life. Death and life become metaphors for the human struggle. In the cross of Christ, humanity died to sin. Our corporate identity in Adam leads to sin, but our corporate identity in the cross of Christ liberates us from it. Humanity is now the tension between Adam and Christ. Paul can become quite literal here, as baptism into the death of Christ is burial with him, while we unite with the risen Christ so that the course of our lives is now in the context of the newness of resurrected and eschatological life. Christ is a sign of the end or destiny of humanity, while humanity is still on the way. The heart of the ethical reflection of Paul is that the future glory of resurrection life impels one to live in the present in a way that is consistent with and worthy of that future reality. The power of resurrection pressures itself into my existence of sin and death and moves me toward newness of life. Baptism reminds us of who we are. We naturally orient our lives toward Adam, but baptism focuses us upon what we can be through union with Christ. While our present is so little conformed to Christ, we live with the hope of resurrection.[2] Jesus represents humanity in the possibility contained in their death. The Father already links our death to the death of the Son. Yes, his death has an expiatory character. Paul is also discussing the universal vicarious significance of the death of Christ. His death was truly for others. Theologically, this means his death stretches beyond the immediate circle of the friends of Jesus and extends to humanity past, present, and future. His death is for all. Yet, this also means humanity already links to the resurrected life in the resurrection of the Son.[3] We can see the anthropological position of humanity as closed in upon itself in sin and death, while humanity is also open to the world in a way that points toward its fulfillment beyond death.[4]The Christian life becomes a process of dying with Christ and experiencing resurrected life with Christ. Baptism anticipates the whole course of human life. Baptism is a sign that the believer no longer belongs to self, but rather belongs to God. This passage is an important witness to the idea that baptism occurs once in our lives. Baptism is present throughout our lives. The moment or event lasts a lifetime. The destiny of our lives is that our new identity in Christ will transform us throughout the course of our lives. As important as the moment or event is for us, it must be a moment that has a continuing transforming influence throughout our lives. Such change of human life is not easy, and thus the metaphors of death, crucifixion, and resurrection are significant. The well-known tension we find in Paul between Already and Not Yet is present in this passage. Even crucifixion takes time. The death of Adam in us takes time. United with the death and resurrection of Christ, the transition remains incomplete. We await the fullness of faith, hope, and love in the promise of resurrection.
1bShould we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? In 5:20, Paul had claimed, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” Because he knew that this statement was open to misinterpretation, he crafts a rhetorical question to open his extended discussion of the topic. The question appears similar to the question asked in 3:8. The question has some merit. 2 By no means! His answer is the strong negative. This chapter shows that Paul had to face the accusation that his position on faith could lead to indifference. Barth refers to the “proud isolation of faith,” excluding it from competing works. Paul wants to focus on the humility of faith. Paul wants to be sure that the lives of Christians do not give credibility to such accusations. Justification and sanctification go together. Where faith is, we also find love and works.[5] Will and intelligence continue to press us toward sin, and thus, regardless of whether we are at our lowest or highest on the ladder of human achievement, we are inevitably sinners.[6] How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Paul then introduces a metaphor that he will employ in the rest of the passage. This image of death, and its mirror image resurrection, will govern Paul’s attempt to explain that the new life in Christ metaphorically represents dying to one’s old way of life and being resurrected to a new one. Paul may well be saying that each of us died to sin when Christ died on the cross. We sin in corporate identity with Adam, but we died to sin in corporate identity with Christ. God incorporates the believer into Christ, and Paul will draw various conclusions from that. The believer thus does not remain in Adam, a natural person, but rather is in Christ, that is, a spiritual person. In Christ, we are dead to sin, for in the person of Christ taking our place, were present, being crucified and dying with Christ. We died. We need to understand this literally. The dying that awaits us in the near or distant future was already comprehended and completed, so that we can no longer die to ourselves.[7] An exchange of places between the innocent Jesus, who was executed as a sinner, and the manifestation of the righteousness of God in those whom he represents before him, but only as sinners for whom Jesus died let their lives, which have fallen victim to death, link to the death of Jesus. Only then does the expiation that the death of Jesus makes possible come into force for individuals.[8] 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We see here the well-known statement in Paul of the Already of salvation, where baptism already buries believers with Christ.[9] This statement may indicate that baptism in the name of Jesus may well have preceded the use of the Trinitarian formula. Paul makes the baptism of the believer analogous to the burial of Jesus in the tomb; it is quite likely that the immersion of the one baptized in the baptismal ritual was visually suggestive for Paul of being entombed. 4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. A new humanity has become possible in Christ, for as God raised Christ from the dead, by the glory of the Father, they walk in newness of life. Jesus is the only one who has reached the end of humanity through obedience and resurrection from the dead. The enacted sign of baptism means that believers are buried in the death of Christ. It points beyond itself, mediating the new creation and is a means of grace. Their own future death is anticipated here after the manner of a sign, shown in a graphic way in immersion, and linked to the death of Christ. In this way, a relation is set up between baptism and all the earthly life that is still ahead for the baptized as the whole is seen in the light of its future end. The story of the life of Jesus between his own baptism and death is something that is anticipated in the sign that baptism is to imitate. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We see here the well-known statement in Paul of the Not Yet of salvation, where resurrection is still in the future.[10] Paul again personifies and envisages sin as a master that dominates the body, or the old self. It rules in human life with an alien power that Christ overcomes. Paul already saw in baptism a picture and likeness of the death of Christ, in which the believer is incorporated into fellowship with Christ in his destiny of death and resurrection, meaning that baptism is a sign that anticipates the future death of the candidates as they are linked to the death of Jesus in order that they may receive the assurance that in the future they will also share in the resurrection life of Christ. This statement places the basis of the Christian hope concerning human destiny on fellowship with Christ. Baptism identifies a person not only with Christ’s act of dying, but also with his rising. Though future, it describes a share in the risen life of Christ that the justified Christian already enjoys, as result of the Christ-event. The resurrection of Jesus serves as an eschatological guarantor of the resurrection of the believer.[11]
In Romans 6: 6-7, Paul can speak of a real dying to this humanity as understood in Adam. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. Crucifixion does not mean immediate death. It would often take hours, even days. Such death of the old self will take a lifetime. The old self is the self we once were, the self that belongs to the old age, the self dominated by sin and exposed to wrath. That self, identified with Adam, has been co-crucified with Christ in the event of us death. Paul has identified the old self with the very act by which Christ himself died. Paul indulges in a rhetorical description of the body inclined to sinning. The destruction of the sinful self through baptism and incorporation into Christ means liberation from enslavement to sin. Paul again personifies and envisages sin as a master that dominates the body, or the old self. It rules in human life with an alien power that overcomes. Once liberated from that master, Christians can no longer focus their sights on sin. 7 For whoever has died is freed from sin. We see again the well-known statement in Paul of the Already of salvation, here focusing on freedom from sin and reconciliation with God, even though their physical death is still ahead of them.[12] One can sever the links with this world of sin. One can cease responding to the stimuli of this world of sin. One can experience this dying here and now. Opening oneself to trustful obedience to Christ makes this dying possible. Herein lies the heart of Paul’s ethical reflection — the future glory of resurrection life impels one to live in the present in a way that is consistent with and worthy of that future reality. Baptism is a sacrament of truth and holiness because it directs us to the revelation by God of eternal life and declares the Word of God. It points beyond itself, mediating the new creation. It becomes a means of grace. The point here is not inventing new rites, dogmas, or institutions, at least, not for the gospel. The one who emerges from the water is not the same person who entered it. One person dies, and another is born. The one baptized is drawn into the sphere of the event of the death and resurrection of Christ.[13] One needs to be stripped of the illusion of the likeness of humanity to God. The death of Christ dissolves the fall. This death is grace. Paul refers to the power of the resurrection pressuring itself into my existence and moves me to walk in newness of life. Such new life must exist beyond the reality we see as people remain what they are. We need to remember that Paul is focusing on the experience of baptism. In baptism, we understand who we are. Pre-occupation with Adam is the old self. Focusing on Christ, we see what we can be. Sin no longer is the dominant force since Christ has come.[14] The connection Paul makes between sin and death presupposes that God set up an expiatory offering to make possible the transfer of sins and their consequences to Christ in his crucifixion. The death of Christ is the offering provided by God that sets aside the Old Testament sacrificial system.[15] 8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Paul brings the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of Christians into essential parallel. Paul stresses that the hope of eternal life is a consequence of fellowship with Jesus Christ in general, but specially with his death in baptism. As death opened up eternity for Christ, death will also open eternity for the believer. Here Paul comes closest to an explanation of the relation of faith to baptism. He now says things primarily of the future. Future life with Christ is the object of faith, whereas the resurrection of Christ is the object of Christian knowledge. Paul refers to the certainty of the resurrection of the believer, as he also suggests in verse 5. Baptism reminds us of the invisible fellowship of the believer with God. Grace is the act of God by which the new person shall be free from sin. Our present, so little conformed to Jesus, still has hope in this secret power of resurrection.[16] Paul stresses that the hope of eternal life is a consequence of fellowship with Jesus Christ in general, but specially with his death in baptism.[17] As death opened up eternity for Christ, death will also open up eternity for the believer. Jesus shared the fate of humanity, the consequence of their sin, and in return humanity receives a share in his life. That which Christ experienced has validity for those who belong to him; he lives out their fate. Sin is the final meaning of this life, but then, Christ died. God is the final meaning of sin and death of death. God stands beyond the death of this life. Therefore, the new impossible possibility that constitutes a real nearness to God can be discerned only by death and the negation of all human possibilities, which are themselves in the likeness of death.[18]The enacted event of the resurrection of Jesus remained linked to expectation of the resurrection of the just, or of those who are related to Jesus by faith. One cannot detach the conceptual content of the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus from the more general expectation of an end-time resurrection of the dead. At this point, representation and expiation means that those whom Jesus represents have the possibility in their death, by reason of its linking to the death of Jesus, of attaining to their hope of participating in the new resurrection life that has already become manifest in Jesus. In this sense, Paul presented the universal vicarious significance of the death of Jesus Christ for his time.[19] Christian teaching today needs to insist on the universal significance of the death of Christ today. Today, we might better think of the link between sin and death as important, based on the general anthropological position of humanity as being both closed in on itself (sin) while the destiny of humanity is open to the world in a way that points beyond death.[20] 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. Death here is, like sin, regarded by Paul as a cosmic entity that has real power over individuals. 10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. Obviously, Paul refers to the newness of eschatological life that the risen Lord now enjoys with God. Christ’s death creates a new situation in which life toward God is the new and enduring reality. Just as Christ died once and is eternally with God, so also the Christian does once, and has everlasting life. Christ’s death was a unique event, never to be repeated; he died once and for all. This victory over death is the foundation for the liberation of the baptized Christian. God raised Christ from the dead not merely to publicize the good news or to confirm his messianic character, but to introduce human beings into freedom, a new mode of life, with a new principle of vital activity, the Spirit. Paul will make the point that the baptized are no longer their own but belong to God. 11 So you also must consider (λογίζεσθε or decide, conclude, reason, think, suppose) yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Paul is stressing that the nature of the event of the cross, so significant in the history of God dealing with humanity, needs to find a response in us of an equally important event. That is, as the death of Christ shows how important our sin was to God, we need to take our sin just as seriously. Thus, in baptism the Christian life is a process of dying with Christ, and at the same time, by the Spirit, the new humanity, the resurrection life, is already at work in Christians. As verses 9-11 make clear, in baptism the Christian life is a process of dying with Christ, and at the same time, by the Spirit, the new humanity, the resurrection life, is already at work in Christians. This notion helps us understand why the tradition can think of the once-for-all quality of baptism. The anticipation of the future death of the baptized relates baptism to their whole future life, as is indicated already by the thought of appropriation through this act. By nature, baptism can be given only and cannot be repeated.
What Paul states here is the beginning of reflection on baptism and the Christian life. For instance, baptism is the constitution of Christian identity.[21] The notion that baptism anticipates the whole course of human life was present in Clement of Alexandria,[22] but was in the background of the tradition. He wants to make it a theme of the Christian view of baptism.
This passage connects baptism, conversion, and penitence.[23] For example, Luther relates baptism to the whole course of the Christian life in his understanding of 6:3-14. In doing so, he opposed the traditional definition of the relation between penitence and baptism as it had developed in Western theology. He attacked the idea of Jerome that Christians lose baptismal grace by serious sins and that penitence is a second plank to rescue shipwrecked sinners when they have lost the first baptism. For Luther, the event of penance and absolution focused on the relation of individuals to the pardoning God, and thus seemed unaware of an ecclesial dimension. Pannenberg wants to stress that baptism is the basis for any notion of second repentance, rather than something that goes beyond baptism. The exposition of Luther on Romans 6 specifically linked penitence and baptism, where, again, he related baptism to the entire Christ life. A theme of this discussion is the non-repeatable character of baptism. Therefore, all one can do is restore individuals to their grounding in the baptism they have already received, rather than command them to repeat their baptism if they have fallen away. Thus, Aquinas[24] could say that as Christ died only once, so one should not repeat baptism. Luther would add, with Paul, that baptism in the death of Christ is an anticipation of the future death of Christians and relate it to the whole of the life still to be lived on earth. This notion supports the indelible character conferred by baptism. Yet, one cannot detach this notion of baptism from the event of regeneration signified in baptism. The regenerating grace of God relates to the entire course of the earthly life of believers. For Luther, based on baptism, the new humanity is to grow and increase in us while the old perishes. The Christian life consists of the struggle between the two in us. In Luther, penitence is a constant appropriation of the humanity that becomes concrete once and for all in baptism. The one act of baptism is the ship of the new Christ life made ready once and for all. If Christians can fall from grace, they can always regain it. Baptism is there throughout life. Baptism needs appropriation every day, which goes along with the present tense used by Paul here. In the sign of baptism, our new identity as Christians is set outside the old humanity, but is lived out physically in it, so that our lives are destined to be absorbed by the new identity and transformed into it. This view goes beyond what Paul states in this passage. Nevertheless, the new form of this thought, the idea of the Christian life as a working out of what baptism signifies, is in line with the intention of Paul. We can see this in the next segment.
To conclude this section, Christian baptism means the believer has united with Christ in his death and resurrection. Because Christ is the pattern for the future humanity God has determined in Christ, the believer has died to sin, which at its root is alienation from God, from other people, from nature, and from our destiny as those created in the image of God. This future humanity in Christ is a present reality for the believer. The believer has already died with Christ. The believer already participates in the epoch making event of the death and resurrection of Christ. The transition from death to life is incomplete. They await the fullness of resurrection. The concept is eschatological in that all of this will be realized in the future, but there is also a present realization in the life of the believer. The self we once were is the self that belongs to the old age, the self dominated by sin and exposed to wrath. That self has been co-crucified with Christ. Paul has identified the old self with the very act by which Christ himself died.
I have two questions. Does the confidence that God is gracious enough to forgive sin mean that it is all right for us to continue to do things that require forgiveness? Further, even if we have a sincere desire to leave behind the old way of life, why does it still come back to haunt us?
Forgiveness opens God to the risk that human beings will not treat their sinfulness seriously. If we forgive someone, we run the risk that it will be an excuse for the other person to do it again. Only God knows the heart. The genuineness of a change of heart (repentance) is something God can see. Given the imperfection and sinfulness of every human life, we could not enter into any healthy relationship without also recognizing the need for grace and forgiveness. We will need to receive it, from others and from God. We will need to offer it to others.
Genuine Christianity consists in uniting ourselves with Christ. We unite with Christ in his death and we shall unite with him in his resurrection. The key here is the future tense. We have not arrived at the destination of Christian living. Human life lived in a Christian way is about steadily shedding ways of life that do not reflect Christ. By faith, we step into the new territory of life with Christ. We will revert to former ways. Yet, our desire is to re-present Christ in our world. As imperfectly as we may do that, it becomes our primary objective. When our imperfection gets the best of us, we have the confidence of grace from God that covers our sin.
Paul focuses our attention upon death, both that of Christ and the need for a certain type of death to occur in the course of living a Christian life.
Schopenhauer said that our lives are like a cat playing with a doomed mouse. Our lives are only briefly secure. Death plays with each of us. It is clear that as our walking is admittedly nothing but a constantly prevented falling, so the life of our bodies is nothing but a constantly prevented dying, an ever postponed death.[25]
Montaigne felt that it was crucial, and possible, to familiarize ourselves with our mortality and thus free ourselves of the delusions of immortality. He thought we could try it out in our imaginations, at least to some degree. Such a reflection in our imagination cannot be perfect, but it is useful. We can approach death and even have a conversation with it. Acquainting ourselves with the fact of our death is difficult but can become useful as we reflect upon the course of our lives. [26] In fact, a useful exercise in meditation and spiritual retreat can be to reflect upon what you hope people would say about you at your funeral.
The great war novelist, James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity, being interviewed shortly before his death, answered a reporter's question, "How, in the middle of the horrors of war, do soldiers keep going? What enables them to fight on?" Jones replied, "What you do is you decide that you are dead. Right. Every soldier I knew, in the horrors of war, just decides, 'I'm dead.' That enables you to live. You go ahead and die, so you can be surprised when, at the end of the battle, you're still alive."
In Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, the hero endures his imprisonment by determining from the outset that he is dead. By watching the guards and their treatment of the prisoners, he came to realize that those who were the first to collapse under the strain of their imprisonment were those who simply could not accept their fate. Those who made it through each day were those who lived as though they were dead to the guards and to their prison existence.
"Time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away," sings the old hymn, O God our help in Ages Past, by Isaac Watts (1719). All life is a march toward death with the constant ticking of time. Or as the great Bard put it:
'Tis but an hour since it was nine,
And after one hour more 'twill be eleven,
And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And from hour to hour we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale. (Shakespeare, "As You Like It" )
Similarly, Paul argues that when someone is dead, that which once exercised such inexorable tyranny no longer has a claim on the life of the deceased. The government cannot indict a criminal who is dead; the Mafia cannot execute a murder contract on someone who is no longer living. And in our case, the world no longer has a claim on us because we were crucified with Christ. We are now defined by his world.
Paul is also dealing with the transformation of a human life from its reality in the sin, disobedience, and death of Adam to its destiny in the righteousness, obedience, and life of Christ. Paul seems to wrestle with what modern psychology calls perseveration (per-SEV-er-a-tion). According to Encarta Dictionary, the word is a noun meaning a response repetition in inappropriate situations, a tendency to repeat the response to an experience in later situations where it is not appropriate. The word is relatively recent, formed in the 20thcentury by analogy with the word with which we have more familiarity, persevere. It describes a brain condition that causes people to be stuck in a particular pattern of behavior.
Perseveration is what led a German pilot named Manfred von Richthofen, the legendary World War I ace known as The Red Baron, to pursue a British pilot far beyond the limits of safe flying and prudent dogfighting. On April 21, 1918, he flew his red Fokker triplane straight into enemy airspace, allowing aircraft and ground fire to shred his plane to ribbons and kill him with a bullet to the chest. “He had target fixation and a mental rigidity,” says clinical psychologist Daniel Orme. The Red Baron “flew into a shooting gallery, violating all kinds of rules of flying — rules from the manual that he himself wrote.”
Perseveration is a brain dysfunction that causes people to persist in a task — to carry on in a completely illogical way, even when the chosen strategy is doomed and could lead to death. The Red Baron was not born with this condition — in fact, for most of his career he was a careful fighter who achieved 80 kills, more than any other World War I pilot. But he suffered a traumatic brain injury in a dogfight nine months before his death, and researchers now believe that this caused his dysfunction to develop.
Perseveration can be a problem for us as well, even without the dogfights — or catfights. Fatal fixations can pop up in our work, our parenting, our friendships and our faith lives, causing us to pursue strategies that are doomed and even disastrous.
Think of fathers who work like slaves to provide for their families, only to put in such long and exhausting hours that they end up with little of themselves to give to their family members. It is a fatal fixation. Or women who put tremendous time and energy into their children’s activities, only to become so immersed in kid-stuff that they fail to be good adult role models. Or friends who talk endlessly about themselves and others — analyzing, criticizing and ultimately destroying the very friendships that are the subject of their conversations. Or Christians who put such effort into being righteous that they end up being self-righteous — and alienating the very people who need to hear the gospel. Nothing is a bigger turn-off than self-righteous folks who, in the words of Oscar Wilde, air their clean laundry in public. Or golfers: who lay one on the fairway. A safe shot lays up before the water hazard in front of the green. What do you do? Fatally fixated, you pull out a fairway wood, convinced you can make it over the water and onto the green. And — of course you don’t. YOU NEVER DO. You play it this way every time. You never make it over the water. Because you’re an idiot; because you get fixated.
These are all examples of perseveration — patterns of behavior that are doomed and dangerous, but in which we can so easily be stuck. What can we do to avoid these fatal fixations?
In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul is determined to show us how to move from death to new life and from sin to righteousness. He is aware that many of us are still stuck in doomed and dangerous patterns, and he wants us to break free of anything that can hurt or destroy us. Therefore, he begins with the question, “How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” (Romans 6:2). It is a good question.
Words like “resurrection” and “new life” have become powerful images of change and transformation. Sometimes change happens quickly and easily. Fairy tales make it easy. All you need is a magic wand. With a wand, the prince becomes a toad. The house becomes a castle. If you had a magic wand, what would you change?
In the world of technology, we are getting many changes. As Steve Jobs put it just a few years ago, “An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator ... these are NOT three separate devices! And we are calling it iPhone! Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is.” I use my iPhone for many things, and occasionally as a phone. I have a computer with me all the time. For that reason, it needs a regular re-start. It needs to refresh or renew itself.
Usually, in the real world in which you and I live, change does not come quickly or easily. We have no magic wands. Mark Twain wrote of the difficulty of transforming a young boy in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He does this through the relationship Huck has with the Widow Douglas. She tries to civilize him. She puts new clothes on him, but he was not comfortable. Yet, Huck will find it difficult to live with such a regular and decent person. Nothing was going to change him.
A person asked Socrates why it was that Alcibiades, who was so rich, so brilliant and so able a public official and general, who had traveled so much, and seen so much of the world, was nevertheless such an unhappy man. Socrates replied, “Because wherever he goes Alcibiades takes himself with him.” Such is the plight of each of us. We carry the prison of our past with us wherever we go. We can turn our fight against evil and for good into an evil, as Nel Noddings in Women and Evil points out, “We do evil in the name of some overriding good, usually, paradoxically, the conquest of evil.” W. H. Auden said it well in his poem, Epilogue to The Age of Anxiety:
We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.[27]
Change does require a moment or event in our lives that stands out from the rest. We need to recognize the power of the self-destructive forces in our lives. A song written by Nicholas Orain Lowe and sung by Johnny Cash sums up the problem we face. The title is, "The Beast In Me."
The beast in me
Is caged by frail and fragile bars
Restless by day
And by night rants and rages at the stars
God help the beast in me
The beast in me
Has had to learn to live with pain
And how to shelter from the rain
And in the twinkling of an eye
Might have to be restrained
God help the beast in me
Sometimes it tries to kid me
That it's just a teddy bear
And even somehow manage to vanish in the air
And that is when I must beware
Of the beast in me that everybody knows
They've seen him out dressed in my clothes
Patently unclear
If it's New York or New Year
God help the beast in me
The beast in me
Shall we name the beast? We might call it sin or the old self. Can we name the event or moment needed for change to begin? We might call it conversion, or the new person Christ has destined us to be.
The root problem of humanity is the “old self,” we take him or her with us, wherever we go. How is it possible for us to persist in sinful behavior, now that we are baptized followers of Jesus? Paul insists that our baptism in Christ Jesus was a baptism into his death, and he says that since Christ was raised from the dead then we, too, have been raised to “walk in newness of life” (6:3-4). It really does not make any sense for us to go on sinning, since our old sinful life is now dead, and our new resurrection life has begun. Problem is, we still sin. We plow ahead with our fatal fixations, traveling in dangerous directions that lead to serious sinfulness. Men who focus on work instead of family can fall easily into adultery. Women who obsess over their children can lose their sense of identity and purpose. Friends can destroy themselves and others with gossip, and Christians can poison the good news of the gospel with self-righteous attitudes. So much for “newness of life.”
Paul is enough of a realist to see that we are not completely free of sin. If we have been united with Christ in a death like his, he says, “we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (6:5). Paul is still looking to the future, knowing that the full glory of resurrection life is not a present reality — it still lies off in the distance, like a beautiful oasis on the horizon. We are on the road to the resurrection, for sure, but we have not quite reached the point where we can put the car in park and relax, knowing that we have finally arrived.
The good news for us today is that we are moving in the right direction. In fact, we have already crossed the border, and have left the world of death and sin behind us.
One way to think of this is as if we move into a new region of living. Physically, we might think of it as moving to a new country. It will take us a while to learn the new language and behavior, but we can learn it. We will not do it perfectly. We will relapse into the old language and behavior. Spiritually, we move into a new region, where Jesus Christ is Lord. We still learn a new language and behavior. We will relapse. Realistically, we will not achieve moral or spiritual perfection. However, we are now free to be what God wants us to be.
The point is this: Christ has evacuated us from the world of sin and death, so we are no longer “enslaved to sin” (6:6). It is as though we have been airlifted out of one country and into another. Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are free to speak a new language and enjoy a whole new quality of life. We have been freed from our fatal fixations and our sinful orientations, and we can now walk in newness of life.
Fathers: this means that you do not have to be a slave to the office. Come home at night. Listen to your wife. Play with your kids. Focus on your family. At the end of the day, your children will not know how much money you made. However, they will know how much attention you gave them.
And mothers, you do not have to be a slave to your kids. Develop your talents. Do meaningful work. Deepen your adult relationships. What your children need most is a healthy, happy mother — one who can be a good role model to them.
Friends, you do not have to focus on your social group any more. There is no reason to waste so much time on gossip. Look outward, into the community, and put some energy into serving the world around you, instead of always talking about the people around you.
And Christians. The key to righteousness is being in a right relationship with Jesus Christ, the one who died so that we might live. I admit that I am not even close in my life to where Paul was in his life. I would like to be. He viewed his life as united with Christ in his death and resurrection. He is saying here that my life could be that way as well. Since Jesus has removed us from the land of sin and death, and started us down the road to resurrection life, then the only response we can make is one of thanks and praise. There is no room for self-righteousness. There is no place for judgmental attitudes. There is no opportunity for condemnation. There are only thanks — thanks to Jesus for making us “dead to sin and alive to God” (v. 11). Jesus has given us this amazing gift of resurrection life, and he asks us simply to trust in him. Instead of self-righteousness, let us show the world some Christ-righteousness. Instead of a judgmental attitude, let us exhibit some Christian gratitude. Instead of condemning others, let us lead them in a new direction.
The Red Baron flew into a shooting gallery and was blown apart because he could not see anything but his target. He had a fatal fixation, one that prevented him from saving his own life by simply turning around. Sometimes that is all it takes: a willingness to change direction. Make a U-turn. Or, as the Bible says: Repent. We can save our own lives, and the lives of others, by turning around. Jesus has broken the power of sinful perseveration, and he invites us to join him on resurrection ground, on that place where sin and death have been replaced by grace and new life. We are now dead to sin and alive to God. We need not fixate on anything else.
[1] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume II, 412.
[2] Barth, Romans, 196-97.
[3] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume II, 350, 427.
[4] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 262.
[5] Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.1 [61.4], 627.
[6] Barth, Romans, 190.
[7] Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.1 [59.3], 295.
[8] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume II, 428.
[9] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 604.
[10] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 604.
[11] Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, 158.3.
[12] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 604.
[13] Barth, Romans, 192-96.
[14] Barth, Romans, 197 – 99.
[15] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume II, 412.
[16] Barth, Romans, 196-97.
[17] Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, 158.3.
[18] Barth, Romans, 206.
[19] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume II, 350, 427.
[20] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 262.
[21] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume III, 232, 239-244.
[22] The Teacher, I.6.26.1-3.
[23] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume III, 245-57.
[24] Summa, 3.66.9
[25] (Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims [Scholarly Press, 1981], p. 28.)
[26] (Quoted by Irvin D. Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy [New York: Basic Books, 1980], p. 211.) It seems to me that there is a certain way of familiarizing ourselves with death and trying it out to some extent. We can have an experience of it that is, if not entire and perfect, at least not useless, and that makes us more fortified and assured. If we cannot reach it, we can approach it, we can reconnoiter it; and if we do not penetrate as far as its fort, at least we shall see and become acquainted with the approaches to it.
[27] --W.H. Auden, "Epilogue" to The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclog (Princeton University Press, 2011), 105.
Liked this. As you know I see salvation in our identity with Christ. This section of Romans is key to me. I like the way you moved from our death and resurrection in Christ to how that motivates are life.
ReplyDeletePaul has always challenged me. This section of Romans, 6-8, is important in understanding his view of the transformation of a human life in Christ. I hope you will follow the further reflections I will offer in the next weeks.
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