Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the 6th chapter:
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. …what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
I have a friend whose child willfully disobeys them. Big surprise there, right? One night this child was seriously misbehaving at the dinner table and her mom told her to stop disobeying her. The child sat quietly by, ate a little bit of her dinner, and then started screaming out the lyrics to Katy Perry’s ‘Firework.’ The mom told her again to stop misbehaving or she’d be punished. The kid listened for a second and then starting singing again. Now the mom was getting angry because she knew her daughter was blatantly disobeying her. So, she told her daughter that she was grounded and as soon as she finished dinner, she’d have to go to her room. At that, the kid started bawling.
Now, that’s not really a big surprise; no one likes to be punished. But the mom asked the child why she was crying. “Because you punished me,” she said. “Well, if you just listened to me, and did what I told you, I wouldn’t have to punish you.” “But, but, Mom, I can’t listen to you. I want to, but I can’t help myself, I can’t.” This little girl knew the difference between wanting to listen and actually listening and obeying. And this little girl knew that she was completely unable to do so.
It’s like that in today’s text. Paul’s words seem easier said than done, don’t they? Don’t let sin reign in your bodies. Present yourselves to God. Sin will not have dominion over you.
Now, I don’t know about you, okay, well, actually I DO know about you, but my heart, my life, my will, my actions, my words, my thoughts… all of them, all of them are sinful. I can’t stop sinning. Sin comes out of me easier than it is to see light. That means, it’s pretty easy to sin because I just can’t help it.
But that’s the thing. I can’t help it. And so, if I read Paul’s words and take them seriously, they seem to say that I am presenting myself before Satan, death, the Law to be a slave to them, to serve them, to give myself to them as their tool to use as they will. And that’s a scary thought. I don’t like the idea of being used by Satan. I don’t like the idea that I can be used to do his work in the world. I don’t like the idea that he gets to say what I can and can’t do.
And quite honestly, that’s the point. I don’t like it. And if I don’t like it, that means I know that there’s a different option, so-to-speak, the option of God. I know that it’s there. I know that there’s something more than Satan. I’d prefer that option, but according to my sinful flesh, I can’t choose God. I can’t present myself to God; I keep on running back to sin, death, and the devil.
But that’s not all that Paul is saying here. In fact, especially as some of my Wednesday service attendees know, I sometimes disagree with how we translate some of the verses we see before us. I’m not saying they’re “wrong” necessarily, but that they lack the proper emphasis. Can I tell you a difference I see? If you look at verse 12, the first verse in the reading, it’s not wrong to say, “Let not sin reign over you in your mortal body,” but I think a better, stronger translation is, “Sin will not reign in your mortal bodies.”
Do you hear the difference? One asks you to do something, “Let not sin,” but the other declares the state of being, “Sin will not.” It’s the difference between me saying to you be righteous, and you have been declared righteous. The latter has nothing to do with your action, but has everything to do with what Christ has done for you.
And this is where Paul is in this letter. Look, my friends, I know that there is seemingly nothing you can do to stop sin. I’ve tried and I’ve failed repeatedly. Again, I am a sinner, a poor sinner, a miserable sinner. I can’t stop it. But what I can do is stop trying to be righteous on my own. What I can do is stop trying to obey the Law on my own. And that’s actually what Paul is telling us here.
Think this morning about Charlie. Charlie was baptized in the waters that washed away all of his sin. But, if we read Romans today as if it is something that we must do to be perfect and sinless, well, then Charlie has no hope because he’s at that age where he truly can do nothing righteous; he just eats and sleeps and coos. The washing today was no gift, if that’s the case. He has no forgiveness. But, if Paul is saying that in our baptisms, in Christ, all is given to us, and we are declared righteous there, then Charlie, no matter what he’s unable to do, will still be righteous in Christ.
You see, by Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross, you have been given every good gift in Jesus Christ, including His forgiveness of all your sins and His declaration over you that you, yourself are righteous, not by your own works, not by your own obedience to the Law, but by His righteousness, His works, and His obedience to the Law.
Now, this might be hard to understand, but think of it this way: you go to the pound to pick out a new dog. You want to save a dog. But the only dog they have there has three legs, a disfigured face, and won’t stop barking. But you bring the dog home anyway. And to you, this dog becomes more loved to you than any other dog out there, no matter what it looks like. It is perfect and loved by you.
This is us to Christ, disfigured by sin, won’t stop sinning, and without a leg to stand on before the Law, Christ came to save us and so He loves us. We are perfect to Him, not because we have anything by which we have to offer Him, but perfect to Him because He loves us and declares us to be His children. In this, we are still disfigured by sin, we still don’t stop sinning, and we have no leg to stand on in obedience to the Law, but Christ counts us righteous. And so, we are.
What more do we have to do? Nothing. Except stop trying to do anything. Paul’s words here tell us that as Christians, because we are in Christ, because we have been washed in His baptism, because we eat and drink our Jesus, because we have been declared righteous, there is a difference in us. Notice, the difference is there because of Jesus’ work, His washing, His feeding, His declaration. We are not different because we’re somehow better or doing better than before.
Before these things, these works of Jesus, we were slaves to sin. We wanted to be sin’s slaves. We liked it, we loved it, we wanted more of it. But now, in Christ, we are slaves of a different type. We Christ’s slaves. We ARE obedient unto Christ, we ARE instruments of righteousness, we ARE obeying the teaching of Christ, We ARE free from sin, death, and the devil.
But, Pastor, I’m not free, I’m not righteous, I’m not obedient. Yes, you are! This is a huge thing in Christianity we call the simul justus et peccator, simultaneously justified and sinner, both at the same time. As sinners, people of the flesh, human beings before we have been translated to be with our Lord, we know we can do nothing but sin in this life. Yet, because we are justified, declared righteous, we also only do the work of God in this life, we fulfill our vocations, serve our neighbor. As Christians, sin does not reign in us because we have been bought at a price. As Christians, we are slaves of Christ. As Christians, we are tools, instruments of righteousness. As Christians, we are under the dominion of Christ, not the dominion of sin.
Should we try to stop sinning? Of course. Should we attempt to obey the Holy Law of God? Of course. Should we serve our neighbor in every way they have need? Of course. But that’s not going to make you righteous, that’s not even going to make your MORE righteous. Christ has already declared you 100% righteous, there is no more that you can add to that percentage. 100% righteous doesn’t exist! It has all been done for you.
This is justification by grace through faith. This is the chief article of the Church. This is the doctrine by which the Church will stand or it shall fall. And this week, this matters. This Wednesday we celebrate the 484th anniversary of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession, the chief confessing article of the Lutheran tradition, where we defend this belief that Christ has done and won it all for us.
This is the difference between being in Christ and every other religion that is out there. The world’s religions say, “Do.” Christ says to you, “Done.” There is nothing you need do to win salvation, there is nothing you need do to be declared righteous, there is nothing you need do to earn forgiveness. What did Charlie do this morning? Absolutely nothing. And for him, and for you, it has all been won, it has all been given to you freely as a gift. It’s a free gift. It’s free. From Christ to you. Christ has given it all to you without your help, without your work, without anything you have done. He did it all for you!
Don’t you see? We are free in Christ to be His slaves. We are free to be slaves to the declaration of righteousness over us. We can depend on Him. When we sin, we can say, “Forgive me,” and Christ does. When we sin, we can say, “I am unholy,” and He makes us holy. When we sin, we can say, “I cannot keep your Law,” and He tells us that He has kept it for us. We are free to be righteous and never depend upon on our works, our own goodness, our own niceness, our own obedience. We are free to depend on Christ forever as His slaves, His servants, always obeying Him because He has already told us we are His forever.
We depend on Him, we depend on all He has done for us and said to us. We depend on Christ and His cross forever and ever, for we already have our eternal life in Him, and it’s so much better to have that from Him, than ever try to win it on our own. For we do not like the option of sin any longer, but we sinful dogs now are obedient to God. We know something better because Christ has given it all to us. He has done it all for you and will keep you in His grace. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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