Trinity 6 2021
Romans 6:1-11
July 11, 2021
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID
How many of you, I wonder, know the date of your baptism? Each Sunday in our bulletin we list the names of those who have the anniversary of their baptism throughout the week. Even so, I wonder how many know when you were baptized. And how many of you take note of that day each year on your baptismal anniversary?
We Lutherans make much of Baptism, and rightly so, because God does in Holy Scripture. And yet many are plagued with a kind of “once and done” attitude at times, as if Baptism doesn’t mean that much in our day to days lives. But it does, as St. Paul explains here in Romans 6, one of the most important Biblical passages about Baptism and its ongoing significance in your life.
So let’s start with Paul’s words at the beginning of the passage, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1-2). The Romans were tempted with the false idea that because Baptism forgives sin, and that God is merciful and forgiving, that they were now free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want. It’s easy to understand this temptation. All too easily we are tempted to make grace an invitation to sin. “I like to sin. God likes to forgive. We’re all set!” Or “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.” This immature attitude misses the whole point of God’s grace in Baptism. There is no excuse, no rationale, no license to sin for those who are baptized in Christ.
Because, as Paul continues… “all who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death. We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4). In baptism a person is united with Christ in the washing of rebirth, which results in the new, Spirit created attitudes, desires, and actions. That’s because in baptism, the Old Man is crucified with Christ, you are baptized into Jesus’ death.
Death is evidence of sin’s presence and control. Later on Paul goes on to say, “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Here, in reference to baptism, Paul isn’t talking about just any kind of death. This is not death not in general, but a specific death, a death to sin. Spiritual death, physical death, and eternal death are all the consequences of sin, not a death to sin. Instead, your death to sin in Baptism is extraordinary because you are baptized into Jesus’ death. Paul says your death to sin in baptism connects you with and plugs you into the death of Jesus.
So that your baptism is your death with Christ, not Christ’s death with or for you. The 4th century bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, “Baptism is the Cross. What the Cross then, and Burial, is to Christ, that Baptism has been to us, even if not in the same respects. For He died Himself and was buried in the flesh, but we have done both to sin” (NPNF 11:405). Christ identifies Himself with us. His righteousness is credited to us, received by faith. His death was on the cross, yours in baptism which gives the benefits of His work on the cross. As you are united to His death and burial and therefore you will be united to His resurrection and life. As this new life has already begun for the child of God, at Christ’s return, your bodies will be raised to life everlasting. “So you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to god in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11).
This is why when a baptism takes place, the person is marked with the sign of the cross upon the forehead and heart – to mark him as redeemed by Christ the crucified. This is why it is a good practice to make the sign of the cross over oneself – it is a mark of your death to sin by your connection to the cross. So even Luther encourages, when wake up in the morning, make the sign of the cross and say, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Marking oneself with a sign of death, of Jesus’ death, to which you have been united. When we use these words before our prayers or in church whenever the “red cross T” appears, we recall and confess before heaven, earth and hell all that God has given us in our baptism: victory over death and devil, forgiveness of our sins, God’s grace, the Holy Spirit, newness of life.
Baptism embraces your entire lives as believers. It sets the daily rhythm of your lives as Christians. Remember your baptism. Never say, “I was baptized,” but “I am baptized.” It is the present reality of your identity and connection with Jesus. Those crucified with Christ have been freed from sin’s effects, and yet the impulse to sin remains even after receiving God’s forgiveness in those blessed waters. The technical word for this is called “concupiscence.” The struggle over your eternal soul, your eternal life, continues. “The Holy Spirit doesn’t permit sin to have dominion, to gain the upper hand so it can be carried out, but represses and restrains it from doing what it wants” (SA III III 44). So Baptism explains how and why you are able to resist sin rather than persist in it. Sin does not control your life anymore. You belong to Christ, bought with the price of His blood. Having been redeemed, don’t waste your lives pursuing opportunities to sin, or condoning your sins or the sins of others. Where the Law causes sin to multiply, grace like a mighty flood, overflows above and beyond all sins.
This is why God gives you His gift of baptism. Your baptism indicates that the Old Adam in you should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. Remember your baptism, that is to say, use your baptism. Live in repentance and faith in the triune God, who has called you His own.