Justified: No Dominion
God Brings Us From the Sphere of Death to Life
Romans 6:1b-11
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. June 25th, 2023
Paul’s teaching on justification is radical. He says that God regards as righteous not those who follow the Mosaic Law, but those who have faith in Jesus Christ. We are not regarded as in the right by God because we have remained faithful to the covenant given to the patriarchs and Moses, but because God has done a new thing in Jesus outside of that covenant. By the death and resurrection of Jesus, by his blood and by his life, we may know salvation.
What makes this so radical is that it takes the work of salvation out of our hands. We do not stay in grace by doing the “works of the Law.” We stay in grace by clinging in faith to Jesus. Salvation is not a matter of what we do. Salvation is a matter of what God has done. This is what Paul means to emphasize.
But Paul’s emphasis on the priority of God’s action in our salvation can lead to misinterpretation. John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism, was very worried about how Paul’s teaching on justification might be misinterpreted. He worried that people might hear that we are justified by faith alone and think good and evil do not matter. That it doesn’t matter what you do at all. You can lie, cheat, and steal and none of that has any effect on your salvation. This is what is called antinomianism. The idea that morality doesn’t matter, good and evil doesn’t matter, rules don’t matter. If that’s what Paul is getting at it certainly puts him at odds with the rest of scripture!
But in our reading this morning Paul wants to take this misinterpretation of his teaching head on. He asks, rhetorically, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?” That is, if as I said last week God justifies the ungodly. And if it is precisely the ungodly who are justified and no one else. Shouldn’t we keep on in sin so that we receive grace upon grace? If God is this cosmic mark handing out grace to everyone who comes begging, shouldn’t we just remain in sin and keep getting the handouts?
Paul’s response is emphatic, “by no means!” But his reasoning is interesting, “How can we who died to sin go on living in it?”
Some people misunderstand justification by putting it in isolation from the rest of the Christian life and thinking that it is simply a matter of God’s declaration and nothing more. That God looks on us miserable sinners and says “you’re a saint.” Like I might look at a pomeranian and say “that’s a wolf” or a box turtle and say “that’s a dragon.” In other words, God is lying or pretending. You see this sometimes with people who think of salvation in terms of being “once saved always saved.” They can tell you the day, hour, or minute they accepted Jesus Christ as savior and Lord. They said the prayer. They gave their life over. But then turned around and lived about the same way as they did before. But they said the prayer! They’re reckoned as righteous in the sight of God!
Paul says that we can’t do that because we who have died to sin can’t go on living in it. Justification is not simply a matter of having our sins forgiven. It is not simply a matter of God regarding us as righteous even though we aren’t. It is a matter of being incorporated into the divine life. Of being regarded as children of God. That means being taken out of one sphere into another. We are ripped out of the domain of death, and we are brought into the Kingdom of God. And this is done through our incorporation into Jesus’ death so we may know his resurrection.
“Do you not know,” Paul writes, “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Baptism literally means “immersion” or “dipping.” The earliest baptisms were all done by dipping people under water and bringing them back up. The symbol is not that of being cleansed, but of being killed. Of plunging your old self under the waters so you can be raised as the new self. In fact, the earliest baptismal liturgies we have that are intact include rites where the baptisands strip naked, are oiled up like gladiators, descend into the waters, rise, and are clothed with white linens. It signifies that they died and were born again. Took off the old self and put on Christ.
How can we turn to the old ways when our old self has died? How can we continue in Sin when God has plucked us out of death’s domain? For whoever has died is freed from sin.” Paul writes, “But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.”
This world is dominated by three spiritual powers. Flesh, Sin, and Death. The Flesh is the evil inclination within us. Sin is the cosmic force that enlivens the flesh so that we do not do what we want to do, but do instead what we don’t want to do. And Death is where all this leads. The destruction of creation, the destruction of our lives. But in the fullness of time God sent his son, Jesus, to deliver us from the Flesh, Sin, and Death. To beat the devil. And restore the divine life within us, to deliver us to the Kingdom of God. When we are justified, that is begun in our lives.
Justification is the moment when we are drawn out of the world of Death and brought into the Kingdom of God. It takes time to grow in the love of God, to overcome the power of the Flesh within us. We call that Sanctification. It is also a work of God in our lives. But that’s for another time. The important thing here is that justification is God’s mighty act of deliverance. That we may die in Christ, so we might die no more.