Part IV of the series “Romans: The Road Less Traveled.”

Romans 5:1-6:23

I was digging around in my office at home this week (always making room for more books) and I came across my baptismal certificate. I was baptized on September 13, 1964 at the tiny Presbyterian Church in Tunnelton, PA—my grandparents’ church. The elder who held me at my baptism was my great uncle Joe, and the other witnesses were Alice Long (who became my Sunday School teacher when I spent time there in the summers) and Nathaniel Nesbitt, who was old enough to have had a grandfather who served in the Civil War.

When I looked at the certificate, however, I noticed that they put down the wrong birthdate for me. I was actually born in December of 1963, but the certificate mistakenly says I was born in December of 1964 (though I wouldn’t mind being 49 again) which means, according to the certificate, that I was actually baptized before I was born.

Now, having lived in Utah for seven years, I’m familiar with the Mormon practice of baptizing the dead. But baptizing in advance of birth? Well, that would be presumptuous, wouldn’t it?

Of course, biblically and liturgically speaking, baptism is only for the living—for those who are able to show up and go under the water, whether they are 9 months or 90 years old. But as I thought about this, and as I’ve been studying Paul’s letter to the Romans, I came to realize that while we get baptized later, the life that God has intended for us—and for all of humanity—from the beginning, is the baptized life—a life that reflects the image of God and God’s purposes in the world. It’s the kind of life that the writer of Psalm 139 wrote about when he said to God:

“You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made… My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret… your eyes beheld my unformed substance.” A similar view is expressed by God to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrate you” (Jer. 1:5). Point is that God has a way of life in mind for us—a way of being in the world. It’s that way that we read about a couple of weeks ago in Genesis 1. We were created in God’s image to reflect his glory and to be his representatives and stewards on the earth (Genesis 1:26-27). That’s our human purpose, even before we’re born.

But as Paul told us in chapters 1 and 2 of Romans, that human purpose has been distorted by sin and death. In chapters 3 and 4, however, Paul told us that God hasn’t given up humans, however, and, indeed, kept his covenant promise to them; coming in the person of Jesus and dealing with sin once and for all. When we respond to this act of God’s grace with faith, as we talked about last week, we are “justified” or declared in the right by God and marked as one of God’s people. We are enabled to begin living the human life God meant for us from the beginning.

But what does that life look like? What are the effects of God’s justifying grace on us? That’s the focus on Romans 5-8, which we’re going to take a couple of weeks to digest. These chapters contain some of the richest teaching about the Christian life and when we take them to heart we find that our baptism isn’t just a formality—it’s the beginning of life!

Romans 5:1-11 acts as the kind of thesis statement for this section of the letter. When you see Paul beginning a sentence with “Therefore,” you know that he is expressing the result of everything that has come previously. If Romans 1 and 2 is about the problem and 3 and 4 are about God’s solution, then 5-8 is about the results of God’s solution expressed in those who have faith in his incarnate Son, Jesus.

I want to suggest that here in chapters 5 and 6 we see several effects that result from justification. We’ll look at three more when we look at chapters 7 and 8 next week. We might categorize this week’s sermon as what happens to us when we are justified and next week about what happens to the whole creation. Humans and creation are inexorably linked in Hebrew thought, and Paul’s worldview is no exception. When we are put right, the whole creation gets put right. That’s the essential message of Romans 5-8.

Reconciliation

The first effect of justification that Paul talks about is reconciliation. “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand” (Rom. 5:1-2a). As I’ve said before, reconciliation is a major theme in Paul’s letters. The sin that separated us from God, which we talked about in Romans 1 and 2, has been dealt with and now we can be part of God’s family, God’s new covenant people. John Wesley thought about justification as the door of a house, where one enters in and becomes part of the household—a new relationship takes place. This is a peace in which God forgives the sins that keep us outside and it’s also a peace through which we can be reconciled to others through that same forgiveness. That’s the kind of peace Jesus told us to pray for in the Lord’s Prayer—“forgive us our sins as we forgive.”

But that peace is not just for us, it’s to be expressed through us for the world. In fact, reconciliation is really the only way that the problems of the world get solved. Earlier this week we celebrated Martin Luther King day—a reminder that it’s not violence and segregation that solve our problems, rather it’s reconciling ourselves to God and to one another. Those who are justified by faith, God’s new community, are part of the reconciling solution to the world’s problem.

Assurance

The second effect of justification, according to Paul, is assurance. “We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” The kind of “boasting” that Paul is talking about isn’t the kind we saw last week after the NFC championship game, when Seahawks defensive back Richard Sherman claimed, “Well, I’m the best corner in the game and when you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree, that’s what you’re gonna get!” That was a boast from a guy who is confident in his own abilities.

But Paul has already told us back in chapter 4 that those who think they’ve done it on their own really have nothing to boast about. It wasn’t being circumcised or following the law that gave Abraham something to boast about, as if he was the best follower of God whoever lived. But neither Abraham, nor any of us (not even Richard Sherman) have any reason to boast in our own ability. The “boast” that Paul is talking about here is confident assurance that God will do what he promised, and when you try him in faith, you really know what you’re gonna get—grace, love, and a place in God’s family.

And so, Paul says, we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. The “glory of God” is a term that takes us back to Genesis 1. Human were created to be angled mirrors for God’s glory, reflecting it to God’s creation. And now Paul says, because of what God has done in Christ, those who have been justified can “boast” in the hope that through God’s Spirit, working in us, we can again share that glory and take on that vocation again. It’s not boasting about us, but about our God.

Joe and I have dealt with a lot of people over the years who struggle with this assurance. They have a hard time believing that God can love them and welcome them into his family, and they’re constantly looking for assurance that God’s grace can also apply to them. I always remember that John Wesley himself struggled to have a sense of assurance of God’s grace in his life, even after years of being an Anglican priest. It was when he heard Luther’s preface to his commentary on Romans, however, that Wesley heard and was assured. “I felt my heart strangely warmed,” he wrote in his journal, “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and had saved me from the law of sin and death.”

When you put your faith in Christ, you are putting your faith in the one, the only one, who can save us and restore the glory of God in us. In verses 6-11, Paul reminds us that “Christ died for us while we were yet sinners.”  We have been justified by his blood and we will be saved through him from the wrath of God. We have been reconciled to God through his death and we will be saved by his life.

John Newton, the former slave trader who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace,” put it this way near the end of his life:

“Although my memory’s fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great savior.” 

That’s something to boast about!

Suffering

The third effect of justification isn’t as welcome as assurance, at least on the surface. It’s suffering. Paul says in 5:3, that we also “boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 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” (Rom. 5:3-5).

Justification reminds us that we’re part of God’s new family, working for God’s new world. The present world is out of tune with the gospel, and we shouldn’t be surprised when the present world tries to make us conform to its patterns and not God’s. The call to Christ is, in many ways, a call to suffering. This is why Jesus said following him involves carrying a cross.

All over the world, Christians are suffering for their faith in places where it’s message of reconciliation is antithetical to those who desire power, dominance, and control. A lot of people ask why the American church isn’t persecuted like that and the answer is really that haven’t done much worth persecuting! When you do everything you can to be “relevant” and match the culture instead of living out of tune with it, people will ignore you rather than persecute you, which is what’s happening now to the church in US. By contrast, many of the people reading Paul’s letter there in those little house churches would eventually be martyred under the emperor Nero, who is said to have tied them to posts, covered them in wax, and lit them on fire to light his garden parties. This is what happens when you proclaim and live as though there is a different Lord of the world than Caesar. Sin and death are still the primary ways the present world exercises its power. But, Paul says, those who have been justified by faith in Christ are to live a different reality.

A different way of being human

Indeed, and this is Paul’s next point, through the faithfulness of Jesus has revealed a completely different way of being human. In 5:12-21, Paul contrasts Jesus with Adam. The problem of sin and death that entered into the world through the one man, Adam, has been dealt with by the righteousness, the covenant faithfulness of Jesus. Where Adam’s family functions under guilt, Jesus’ family lives under the free gift of grace. Where death exercised dominion in Adam, those justified by the grace of Christ are under the hope of resurrection. Adam brought condemnation, Christ brought life. Where the appearance of the law pointed out the sin of Adam’s family; the grace of God in Jesus abounded all the more.

There is a lot in this tight little section to unpack, but in general we can say that Paul is reminding the Roman church, and us, that they have been redeemed, set free, to be Jesus’ people, not Adam’s people. In Jesus, God has solved the Adam problem—the culmination of the mission of God begun with Abraham. As Jesus’ people, we can begin to live the life we were created for from the beginning. Paul will expound upon that way of life in chapter 12, but in order to live that life we have to first leave the Adam way of life behind. And how do we do that? Well, Paul says in his fifth point, that begins with the transformative work of baptism.

The transformative work of baptism

Chapter 6 begins with Paul refuting one possible misconception of what he’s been talking about. Since we’ve received all this grace, should we keep on sinning so that we can get even more grace? That sounds absurd, but in reality that’s the way that many Christians live, compromising the life of Adam with the grace of Christ.

I referenced this a couple of weeks ago, but it bears repeating. There are lot of Christians who define grace as God simply “accepting us as we are.” God’s grace, in other words, simply validates us. We can go on as we have been because, well, God’s grace will cover us. No need to change. Their answer to Paul’s question, “Shall we continue in sin?” is “Yes, of course!” But that cannot be, says Paul, and Romans 6 is his answer to that false view of grace and faith. Yes, God accepts us as we are, but he doesn’t leave us there. Grace is a gift aimed at transforming us into Jesus’ people, not just Adam’s people with a stack of get out of jail free cards!

You’ve been baptized, says Paul. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 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” (6:3-4).

Paul is echoing the Exodus story here. In Genesis 15, which we looked at last week, God told Abraham that his family would be slaves in Egypt, but that God would liberate them from that slavery. We know how that story goes—they escape through the Red Sea, through water, and to freedom, all by the hand of God. And now, Paul says, since you are one of God’s covenant people through justification by faith, you, too, have been delivered from slavery to sin and death, brought through the waters of baptism and into new life. The old life, Adam’s life, is dead in you—it died with Christ on the cross. But on the other side of the water is life—Jesus’ life, resurrection life. So, Paul says, in 6:11, “you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ.”

If we’ve been baptized, if we’ve been justified, we must no longer (v. 12) “let sin exercise dominion in [our] mortal bodies,” nor should we “present [our] members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life.” In other words, don’t go back to Egypt! In Christ, you have taken the wilderness road out of there, through the water, and to freedom! Indeed, Paul says, in 6:15-23, you are no longer slaves to sin but “slaves of righteousness” (v. 18). And (v. 22) now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It seems counterintuitive—freedom from sin through slavery to God, but as E. Stanley Jones once pointed out, “the first thing in life is to obey, to find something, or rather Someone, to whom you can give your final and absolute allegiance.” Bob Dylan, who became a Christian for about 20 minutes back in the 80s, put it like this, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody. It may be the devil or it may be the Lord but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

Baptism marks us as people who serve somebody. We’ve come through the water and take the road from Egypt. Like the Israelites in the desert, some will want to go back. But real freedom only comes from following the God who has liberated us in Christ. We’ve been called to be his people. God is putting the world right, so God puts people right, so that they might be his right-putting people. That’s what justification prepares us for, and baptism is the sign that we’re beginning to move in the right direction.

Martin Luther, the great Reformer, used to touch his head when he was tempted in order to remind himself that he had been baptized. It was a reminder to live the life that God’s grace had freed him for—to live the life that God had called him to from the beginning.

As I look at my baptismal certificate, I’m reminded that this way of life is what God has had in mind for me, even before I was born—a life of reconciliation, a life of assurance, a life of suffering love, a life with Jesus’ people. No other life will do. Oh, there are times when it’s tempting to go back to Egypt—in fact I’ve been tempted to cross over many times in my life. But the only way to live is the way God created me for—a life that reflects his image. That’s the life all of are meant for.

 In our baptismal liturgy, there’s a provision to “remember your baptism.” Occasionally, someone comes to me wanting to be re-baptized. One guy said it was because “it didn’t take the first time.” Well, whose fault was that? But even while we are sometimes looking back to Egypt, God is still calling us forward—to remember that we came through the water, and because of Jesus, we are free to be the people whom God created us to be.

And so, I invite you to remember your baptism…and be thankful. Even better, remember your baptism—and follow Christ!