Dear Church family,
I know that we all enjoyed a powerful and wonderful service yesterday. It was a worship service that showcased how Jesus transforms lives and is doing so within our Church family. It’s an encouraging reality and essential truth to understand for all of us: we have been baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection.
One of the truths that I desperately wanted to convey to you is the wonderful way that baptism encourages us in our fight against sin. That was the main focus of Romans 6. Paul does not merely bring up the subject of baptism as a doctrinal lecture, but he merges that powerful reality into a discussion on Christians continuing to sin or not to sin.
And apparently, being baptized (dipped and dyed) into Christ’s death and resurrection assures us that we have the power to not continue to sin.
Knowing that you all hate sin and put up a fight against it regularly (because all Christians do), I’m sure that knowing and remembering that your old sinful self was crucified with Jesus on the Cross serves as a reconfirming and comforting reality for you. It certainly does for me!
What I love about baptism is how is means that all of me as a sinner has been killed on the Cross with Jesus. And this is such an important truth to grasp: not only do we believe that Jesus died on the Cross for our sins, but we died with Him too.
To make the jump in your understanding between “Jesus died for me” and “I died with Jesus” is so crucial because it means that you understand the issue of baptism: we are united to all that Jesus did for us. We are not standing back, 2,000 years at a distance from the Cross and saying, “I believe it happened for me,” but instead we also believe that “the Cross happened to me,” and that miraculous retro activating event means all the difference between fighting victoriously against sin and fighting sin deceived thinking that it holds more power over us than it does. It does not, because our sinful self was crucified with Jesus and will never need another funeral.
However, Romans 6:11-14 admits that while we have been freed from the punishment (Rom. 5) and power (Rom. 6:1-10) of sin, we have not yet been freed from the presence of sin (hence Rom. 6:11-14), and that’s why we must choose to make choices that honor God in the power of our new identity in Christ.
The key to understanding the message of Romans 6 to us is understanding that we fight sin successfully from the crucial vantage point of “sin is dead me, therefore, I won’t sin because it’s not the true me. It’s truly dead on Christ’s cross 2,000 years ago.”
Certainly, this is not how we Christians feel, because we have “passions” (Rom. 6:11) that are at war against our spirit (1 Peter 2:11). Many of you are aware of niche passions that you possess for sinful things, or good things to inordinate levels and sin feels more alive than ever! But remember, feelings don’t make facts! The fact of the matter is that your old sinful self is more than old, it’s dead in Christ’s crucifixion.
And therein is where our battle for ‘offering our body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness” vs. “offering our bodies as instruments for righteousness” begins: in the mind! It begins by admitting and believing that our new identity is truly, dead to sin because we’ve died with Christ, and alive to righteousness, because we’ve risen with Christ in that supernatural retro activating event called baptism.
When we believe that we are who we are in Christ, it convinces us not to sin, because who would play around with putrid, smelly, rancid, repugnant dead corpses from our former life, pre-Christ. We won’t do such a thing if we truly believe that not only did Jesus die for our sins, but we, as sinners, died with Him on the Cross, 2000 years ago, and it is finished!
I pray that our Church would continually walk in an understanding of how the Gospel has actually changed our identity because of that wonderful event called baptism. The Gospel has been applied to us! We have been united to Christ in all of His Gospel events. What happened to Him happened to us. And for Christians who hate our sins and are fed up with our proclivity towards temptation and caving into it, this is the best news in the world, my sins do not define me! They are dead with Christ and God sees me like He sees His Son Jesus. I pray that you all would see yourself as God sees you: dead to sin and alive with Christ to righteousness!
What a reason to rejoice!
With love in Christ,
Aaron
