ROMANS: Buried Alive

We were left wondering if Paul’s assertion of the supremacy of grace was a dangerous license to sin. Paul now turns his attention to that nagging question:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Paul takes this fallacious line of thinking and shows it to be flawed. This amazing grace cannot be construed as a license to sin, for the very awakening to that grace was also a death to the kind of worldview that leads us to sin in the first place. Once we truly come to grasp and embrace this gospel of acceptance, we die to that former way of thinking — acting out of fear, preservation of self, and our unharnessed desires are replaced with a spirit of peace and a life of self-sacrifice. We die to that old way of thinking.

Paul then uses baptism as his picture and teaching point (to understand why Paul might use baptism at this point in his argument, I would recommend reading Elementary Principles by D. Thomas Lancaster; we will study this further in our upcoming look at the book of Hebrews).

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

Paul says that this baptism we undergo is a physical picture (among other things) that teaches us about the transformation taking place. Just as Jesus died, was buried, and then brought back to life, so there is a part of us that has been put to death so the truest part of us might live on. Baptism is this watery grave, an image of burial and resurrection, teaching us about this new life.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

We left our “old self” in the watery grave; it died a death and can be put to rest. We, however, live on. The part of us that lives on is the part of us being shaped into the image of Christ (and you might notice all of the language of “joining” and “with him” and “united”).

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

This is where it really starts to sound like we are reading the culmination of one single narrative. This exhortation from Paul is nothing new at all. It takes us all the way back to the beginning of the story, where we meet Adam and Eve in the middle of the garden and are told about their temptations, their desires, and their invitation to demonstrate they are made in the image of God. They are invited to know when to say enough.

And so are we. Paul makes sure we know our invitation has not changed since the dawn of time; the language is incredibly similar to the language of Genesis. We are invited to trust the story, to master our desires, and to demonstrate self-control.

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

Finally, Paul circles back to the question at hand. If grace is this good, should we just continue in our sin? Absolutely not! The truth is we will offer ourselves to one of two realities. We can live out our lives in service to fear or we can live out our lives in the service of trust, faith, and love. But a life of bland neutrality is not an option available to us. This gospel has come to rescue us and set us free from a life of servitude to fear and self-preservation; it has come to set us free to tzedekah — to righteousness, generosity, and self-sacrifice.