Romans 6:1b-11

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. 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.[1]

 

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. Can we name the event or moment needed in order for change to begin? We might call it conversion.

               In Romans 6:1b-11, 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. Sin and death are realities in Adam (5:12ff). 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 sin seriously, which we can see in the cross. 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. 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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] 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.

---

[1]  --W.H. Auden, "Epilogue" to The Age  of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclog (Princeton University Press, 2011), 105. 

[2] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume II, 412.

[3] Romans, 196-97.

[4] Systematic Theology Volume II, 350, 427.

[5] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 262.

Romans 5:1-8

Romans 5:1-8 (NRSV)

 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³ And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

⁶ For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸ But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. 

In 5:1-5, Paul gives a summary of the character and qualities of the new life in Christ. “Justified” in Roman law refers to a judge who knows the accused person is guilty but pronounces the defendant free anyway. We might think of it as a pardon. Human beings receive this pardon through the event or act of faith. Chapter 4 has explained that Abraham received his pardon by his faith and obviously apart from the Law of Moses. This event or act of faith that opens up our pardon gives us peace, reconciliation, creative harmony, inner security, and serenity with God. The first effect of such pardon is peace, in contrast to the wrath or judgment of God of which human sin is a reasonable consequence. The human acts of rebellion Paul describes in 1:18ff have a consequence in judgment. Yet, this divine judgment shows itself in allowing human beings to reap the consequences of their actions. Humanity reaps what it sows. Yet, the human situation is not hopeless. A faith response on the part of a human being brings the person into a new covenant.  Christ has removed the reasonable consequence of human sin. To clarify, we are the ones who need this peace and reconciliation with God, which has occurred in Jesus Christ. God is already well disposed toward humanity. Such peace with God gives us access in the sense of a social introduction to the God who give us grace. Since God gives us this grace, it represents the divine self-giving. We can stand or abide in this grace. Christ brings us close God, so close that we hope to share in the hope of the glory of God. The glory of God is human destiny, created as we are in the divine likeness. This destiny is part of the restoration that will come in the new age to come. Such hope has the orientation toward the eschatological gifts of resurrection and life. Obviously, this destiny is not our present. Such is the nature of hope. Our present includes suffering, even as the Lord Jesus suffered. Our hope helps us to rejoice in suffering for Christ. Our hope helps us to allow suffering to produce the virtue of endurance, perseverance, or courage. It suggests living faithfully even as one suffers for Christ. Such courage in the face of suffering will produce one who can withstand the tests of a Christian life, which is character. Living faithfully through the tests of life is a matter of our integrity. Yet, such endurance and withstanding of tests derives from the hope we have for our destiny. We are standing or abiding in this grace, which invites us to live faithfully and persevere among the tests of life. Thus, the virtues of which Paul writes do not derive from our efforts, but from the turn away from ourselves and toward the hope and grace with experience through Christ. Withstanding such tests, coming full circle, produces hope. Yet, this hope is not just wishful thinking or a nice idea. It has its basis the love or grace of God seen in Jesus Christ and poured like life-giving water into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit is the personal divine presence that the pardoned believer enjoys. We have here the assurance of fellowship with God in the link between love and Spirit. Christian love is participation in the love God has for the world. The love of neighbor participates in the love God has for the world. The love of God is the destiny of humanity, but the present gift of the Holy Spirit is an anticipation of that destiny. Pardon, then, is one element that opens us to deeper dimensions of our relationship with God. The human situation is one that participates in rebellion from God. In Christ, we receive pardon for that rebellion. However, God did not stop at pardoning us for our rebellion. We have a filial relationship to the Father. Being in this relation is the true content of the new relation to God due to our regeneration through the gift of the Spirit. This new relation is primarily a fellowship with Christ on his destined way to crucifixion and resurrection. The new relation is participation in the filial relation of Jesus to the Father and therefore in the intra-Trinitarian life of God. The new relation rests upon the hope of the inheritance of eternal life by the resurrection from the dead.

In 5:6-8, Paul details further how the death of Christ has brought about the new reality of which he writes. Many people today struggle with this notion. How can the death of a man so long ago still be something significant to me today? We will need to be open to the importance of an event in history. The moment becomes significant, rather than human rational reflection. It also means openness to the revelation or disclosure. This will mean that human beings need to orient themselves to this event if they are to discover truth. This means the event is an encounter rather than a calm reflection on process. Paul has already referred to the necessary event of the act of faith and the divine presence through the Holy Spirit as the subjective encounter human beings will need. Paul stresses now that our personal response orients us to the divine event of the death of Christ. Human beings are weak in that they could not accomplish for themselves what God has done in Christ. Their weakness is a sign of their ungodliness in their turn from relying upon the creator to relying upon self. However, “at the right time,” in a moment, in an event within human history, Christ died for these persons too weak to save themselves. The event is a purposeful act of God. The event has a vicarious character. The death of Christ and his obedience through suffering is the means by which the love and grace of God shows itself to the world. We may have here a form of martyr theology, suggesting that Christ is the willing self-sacrifice of one on behalf of many. He is our example and shows us the way. Christ is for us, independently of our response. God shows divine love and demonstrates divine grace in the event of the death of Christ. This death has a vicarious character in that it benefits others. In that sense, all of weak humanity was present in this event.