In case you haven’t noticed, I kind of like history. I love the stories I love that it gives a glimpse of life so many years ago. I especially like the history surrounding the stories of the Bible. It gives us context, which I think is important. It is important to know what the world looked like. It’s important to understand the context in which the scriptures were written. Because while the scriptures are relevant for us, they were originally written for the people of 1st century Palestine. I want to give a little historical context to our scripture this morning.
The apostle Paul wrote the letter to the Romans, appropriately enough, to the Christian church in Rome. This is the only letter Paul wrote to a church he did not found. Not only that, he had never even visited the church. The letter was written about 57 AD. 8 years earlier, in 49 AD, the Roman emperor Claudius had banished all Jews from Rome. According to the Roman historian Suetonius, “The Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus.” It is believed that Chrestus was a misunderstanding of Christus, the Latin word for Christ. It is believed that Jewish Christians were preaching Christ in the Roman synagogues. This caused riots or ‘disturbances’. In 54 AD, Claudius died and Jews were allowed to return to Rome. The return of Jewish Christians to churches that became predominantly Gentile brought more conflict; specifically regarding the role of Jewish law in Christian theology. So 3 years after the Jews return to Rome, Paul writes this letter.
Now some background on our particular passage, Paul argues that we are justified by God’s grace through faith in Jesus. In other words, he’s likely siding with the Gentile Christians. This theology of being justified by faith raised questions. In our reading for today Paul deals with one of these issues. Which you will hear.
Romans 6: 12-23
We jump mid-stream into Paul’s argument. In verses 1-11, Paul laid out an argument that through God’s grace we, as Christians have mysteriously participated in the death of Christ, so we are dead to sin and alive in Christ.
Romans is generally seen as a literary style called the diatribe. It was a common style in Paul’s time. This style has certain characteristics. The author, in this case Paul, writes as if he is arguing with an imaginary opponent. This creates an imagined dialog. This is seen when Paul uses rhetorical questions “Do you not know…” and asks and answers his own questions. “Should we sin because we are under grace? By no means!”
In this passage Paul talks about freedom. We are freed from sin. What does that mean to be free? The concept of justification by grace has some difficulties. God’s grace, God’s free gift to us, is that by our faith in Jesus we as made right with God, our sins are forgiven. So Paul’s imaginary opponent asks, doesn’t that mean we are free to sin?
After all, we are already credited with righteousness. All of our good deeds, all of our rule keeping won’t please God anymore; we are blameless in God’s sight. We can’t get more saved! So why worry about sin? Doesn’t God’s grace free us to do whatever we want? That’s what freedom is, right? The ability to do whatever we want to do. If we are free we don’t have to be obedient to anyone or anything but ourselves, right? Is that what it means to be free? Not according to Paul. This passage reminds us that we are still vulnerable to sin even after our ‘justification’. We have two choices, we can be slaves to sin, or we can be slaves to righteousness. In other words, we put ourselves under obligation to either one or the other.
When I was in school, a long time ago, we were given a ‘Freedom of Choice’ form every year. In Florence, we had several elementary schools, 3 or 4 junior high schools, and 2 high schools. One of my favorite events of the year was filling out that Freedom of Choice form. I could choose the school I wanted to attend. Sort of. My parents had to look at the form. They had to sign it, which they wouldn’t do if they didn’t like my choice. I was under their obligation. My choices were influenced by that.
As followers of Christ we have chosen to be slaves of righteousness, we have chosen to let righteousness govern over us. To let righteousness direct our choices. In doing so we are freed of the burden of sin. We are freed of the death that comes with being enslaved to sin.
But, you know what, that doesn’t come as easily as we would like it to.
Paul uses the imperatives in this part of his letter. Does anyone recall from grammar class what an imperative statement is? It’s a command. Do not let sin exercise dominion over you! Present yourself to God!
Paul’s use of the imperative calls us to participate in our sanctification. Which is what it means to be a slave to righteousness. That leads to sanctification.
You know, I’ve used some big churchy words. I want to take a moment to explain them a little. I want to explain them in terms of God’s grace.
As United Methodists we believe that God acts in our lives through the Holy Spirit with an undeserved, unmerited action that we call Grace. We see 3 forms of God’s grace; it is not divided into 3 different graces, but 3 forms of the same grace.
The first is Prevenient Grace. I talked about this a little bit a couple of weeks ago. It is also called preceding or preparing grace. That is grace that precedes any conscious awareness on our part of God’s work in our lives. This grace is what first prompts us to please God, our first inkling of God’s will, and the first slight twinge of knowing we have sinned against God. It is this grace that causes us to reach out to God, to repent and ask forgiveness; that first moves us toward faith. It prepares us for God to work in us.
The second form of grace is Justifying Grace. That’s one of those words I’ve used a few times. Justification. This is also called God’s saving grace or accepting grace. This is where God reaches out to us as repentant believers to accept and forgive us. You might call this ‘getting saved’ or ‘being born again.’ But those terms put the action on us, but it’s not. This is God’s action of forgiving our sins and restoring us to right standing with God, or righteousness. Justification can be sudden or it can be a gradual process. This is where we become the ‘new creation’ that Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians.
This starts us on a journey. It begins the ongoing process of Discipleship. Which leads to the third form of Grace. Sanctifying Grace, also called sustaining or perfecting grace. This is God’s continued saving work in our lives. Sanctification, another of those big churchy words I used earlier, is the process that takes us toward what John Wesley called Christian Perfection. Which he defined as a heart “habitually filled with the love of God,” and as “having the mind of Christ and walking as he walked.” In other words, being a true disciple. Sanctifying grace is God’s work in us through the Holy Spirit to help move us on that journey.
But it is important to remember that Discipleship, learning to be like Christ, is a process. Actually I prefer to call it a journey. Process makes me think of bologna. It is a journey with ups and downs and twists and turns and unexpected delays and moments in the fast lane. When we profess our faith in Christ as our redeemer, we are justified, we are made right in God’s eyes.
But that does not mean we are, from that moment forward, perfect. Far from it. We are freed from our enslavement to sin.
But sin is a jealous master. Sin won’t leave us alone just because we serve a new master.
That’s why Paul reminds us that ‘the wages of sin is death.’ I want to say something about the word wages. Notice it doesn’t say that the end result of sin is death. Or the full payment of sin is death. Wages. The word Paul uses, opsōnia, actually refers to the daily pay received by soldiers. So it’s not just one big, capital D, death; but many daily deaths. Each sin kills just a little of our desire to follow God. They eat away at our loyalty to our new master, Jesus Christ.
But, through God’s grace, we are forgiven and we move toward Christian perfection; perfect love. By God’s free gift, we the have promise of eternal life in Christ Jesus.
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