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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.  Let us pray.

 

O Lord, send forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives. In Jesus' name, amen. The joke that regularly makes its way around social media, perhaps you've heard it, goes something like this.

 

My wife just looked up and said, you aren't even listening, are you? And I thought to myself, well that's a strange way to start a conversation. Today's reading from Romans starts with the words, so then. It's like starting a reading with the word, therefore.

 

It's obviously not the start of the conversation. And in fact, for our text today, it's a climactic moment in the epistle, a conclusion that Paul has been building towards. Because we look at the topics, the vocabulary of all of Romans chapter 8, it becomes clear that Paul is laying out the significance of what he's been saying since chapter 5, all of our readings for the last two months.

 

He began Romans 8 by contrasting living according to the flesh with living according to the Spirit, a theme he's already introduced in chapters 6 and 7. In chapter 8, he returns once again to the language of walking, contrasting those who walk according to the flesh with those who walk according to the Spirit, something he called in chapter 6, walking in newness of life. All he's doing is laying out the implications of the reality he's described in chapters 5 and 6, the reality that we are now at peace with God, no longer enemies with God, at peace with God on account of Christ, that we have been raised with Christ in baptism to walk in newness of life. And because of that, we ought to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.

 

He opened chapter 8 with the comforting reminder that because of what Jesus has done, there's literally nothing left to condemn those who are in Christ through baptism. Jesus has already fulfilled the law by completing its obligations and by suffering as the sin offering to atone. The result is that the requirement of the law is fulfilled by Christ, and when God looks at us, he sees it as fulfilled in us, too.

 

And so yet again, as with the last several chapters, Paul is challenging us to change the way we think, to change how we understand this life and our place in it. The way of the world says that what you do determines who you are. The world tells you you have to be good enough first, have to have the right skills first in order to make the team or get the job.

 

You can't be a computer programmer if you don't know how to write code. You can't be a customer service rep if you're not good with people. You can't be on Broadway if you can't sing or act.

 

In the world, what you do matters first, dictates how you're viewed by the people around you. But the way of Jesus is the opposite. Who you are in Christ is yours as a gift, not by what you've done, but by what he has done for you.

 

And what he's done for you, well, that now determines who you are. Who you already are in him defines how you live. That was the original intent and design of God's covenant with Moses.

 

The idea was that because God had claimed the Israelites as his own, without any merit or worthiness in them, and because he dwelled among them in his tabernacle and he met with them at his altar, they were called to live differently from the nations around them. But it was God's gracious choosing that truly made them who they were, and was God's faithfulness to his promises that sustained them as his people. But nevertheless, Israel began to turn things upside down.

 

They began to see their fulfillment of the covenant as the means by which they kept themselves the chosen people of God. That's because the sinful flesh is always turning things upside down. As Paul puts it in Romans 8, the mindset, the outlook of the flesh is always hostility toward God.

 

And therefore, those who walk hand-in-hand with the flesh cannot please God. They remain enemies with God. But remember, Paul says, while we were enemies of God, Christ died to set things right.

 

And in baptism, you are united to that death, and you are raised to walk differently. Newness of life. Therefore, Paul concludes, we are no longer people of the flesh only, but people in whom the Spirit of God is living and active.

 

And the mindset, the outlook of the Spirit, well, that's peace with God through the sacrifice of Christ and the new life we live in him. Therefore, today's text says, we are debtors. The same idea Paul's already brought in chapter 6. There he says we are slaves to the one that we obey.

 

Either sin, which leads to death, or obedience, which leads to life. In Christ, we are slaves to righteousness. In Christ, we are debtors, not to the flesh, but to the Spirit.

 

And yet, Paul says, we shouldn't think of our place in debt to the Spirit as a life of slavery or fear. You have nothing to be afraid of. Our salvation, our reconciliation to God, it doesn't depend on how well we live in the Spirit.

 

Instead of a spirit of fearfully trying to earn or justify or maintain our place as the people of God by our efforts, we've received the spirit of adoption. You are part of God's family in Christ, united with him in a death like his, in order that you might be united with him in a resurrection like his. We are God's children now.

 

And if children, then heirs with Christ our brother, waiting to receive the final inheritance of new life in a perfect creation. That's where today's text stops, but if you're familiar with Romans, you know that Paul is not done heaping comfort upon comfort. As you no doubt already know, Romans 8 is one of the most comforting chapters in all of Scripture.

 

You'll hear it over the next few weeks. There is nothing, nothing left to condemn those who are in Christ Jesus. The sufferings of this present time aren't even worth comparing to the glory to be revealed.

 

And if God is for us, who could be against us? But today we pause where Paul's reading ends, today's text ends, reminded of the reality that Paul puts before us today. It's the reality he's been putting before us throughout the entire letter, the reality of who we are and how we live. And who we are is simply this, children of our Heavenly Father, adopted into his family through the water of baptism.

 

So today we think about that language of adoption. It's a beautiful language. It actually perfectly encapsulates our identity in Christ.

 

Think for a moment about the power of a name. In the United States, to be born a Kennedy or a Clinton or a Bush, well that means something. It means some doors will open for you, others will be slammed in your face.

 

The children who bear those names go through life receiving both the rewards and the consequences for the things that their parents have done. Because the name that they bear means something. Apart from the adoption of baptism, our names are worthless.

 

My name is nothing but sin and death and failure. My name is unbelief, shame, and guilt. There are no great historic deeds attached to my family name that will somehow convince God that I'm worth associating with.

 

And what I need is not to find something so noteworthy that God will finally take note of the significance of my name. What I need is a new name. What I need is a new identity.

 

And that's what baptism does. It gives a new name. It gives the name of God himself.

 

That's what your baptism has done. Through the washing of water and the Word, you now bear the name of God. You are adopted into his family.

 

His life is your life. His holiness, his righteousness, his everything is yours because your identity is in his name and not your own. Nothing left for you to do to earn it.

 

It's already done. There's nothing the devil or the world or your sinful flesh can do to undo what God has done in baptism. They cannot void or challenge the adoption papers.

 

They cannot challenge for custody. You belong to the God who loves you. You are adopted into his family.

 

That's who you are now. And so Paul says, that's how we ought to live. Not because living in the reality of your new identity makes you somehow more adopted, as if that was possible, but because as a child of God, your Lord has nothing for you but gifts of love and mercy.

 

When Daddy Warbucks adopted little orphan Annie, his home became her home. She could swim and play and eat and live with him. Why would she want to go back to the hard-knock life at the orphanage? So also, you have been adopted into the family of God.

 

Why would we want to walk through life hand-in-hand with the sinful flesh? Why would we want to return to a path that leads only to death? It's not who we are anymore. Why would we want to live as if it was? Today's text drives us beautifully back to our baptism, to the identity that our Lord has given us there. You don't need me to tell you that life in this world is complicated.

 

The sinful flesh refuses to quit. Temptation lurks around every corner. The devil prowls around like a lion seeking someone to devour.

 

As children of God, we will have good days and bad days in our battle against these things. But our comfort is knowing that our success or our failure against the devil or the world or our sinful flesh in this momentary life, it's not ultimately what matters. What matters is the eternal name put upon you in your baptism.

 

You are a child of God. The eternal inheritance has been promised to you. So at the risk of oversimplifying, what Paul is basically encouraging us to do is simply do what we can to live each day as the redeemed children of God, walking not according to the flesh but according to the name of God, the spirit that has been given to us.

 

And at the end of each day, go to sleep in peace. Find your rest in the comfort and the certainty that your Lord's name gives you. You are adopted into his family.

 

His name is now your name too. He will guard you and he will defend you in his name and as his children through this life and into the life to come. In Jesus' name, Amen.

 

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Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. And let us pray.

 

O Lord, send forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives in Jesus' name. Amen. While the world around us might be taking it easy on a holiday weekend, our journey through Romans has brought us to the most hotly contested section of the entire epistle.

 

While we're not going to spend any time today describing the different ways that Christians understand Paul's words, if you are interested, there's hundreds of pages, hundreds of books, essays, articles, commentaries, all about the second half of Romans chapter 7. We're not just going to do a survey of that today. What we are going to do is continue what we have been doing for the last several weeks. Summarize what Paul has said to this point in the book of Romans, and look at what he adds in today's text, because in today's text, like in the ones before it, Paul gives us words of hope, words of confidence, words of comfort for the struggles that we face daily.

 

To get a sense of what Paul means in today's text, we don't have to go all the way back to Romans chapter 1, just the beginning of Romans chapter 6. There, in verses that are no doubt familiar to you, in a section on baptism, Paul said that the one who has died with Christ in baptism has been set free from sin. Or do you not know, he said, that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death, and if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. And we know, Paul says, that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

 

For, Paul says, the one who has died has been set free from sin. What does that mean? What does it mean to be set free from sin? Well, it doesn't mean that we no longer sin on a daily basis. It doesn't mean we won't sin in our lives or in our vocations.

 

What it means is that we are set free from the condemnation for our sin. Sin will, of course, still be there, but the righteous God will not hold our sin against us. He will not see us according to our sin.

 

He will see us through baptism. He will see us through Christ. That's what Paul is saying.

 

In fact, the Greek word that's translated as set free in Romans 6 verse 7 is more literally translated as declared righteous. Your English Bible probably even has it in the footnotes. Paul uses a different word for freedom than he does throughout the rest of chapters 6 and 7. It's more better, it's more accurately translated, the one who has died has been declared righteous from sin.

 

Paul's drawing our attention to something different. The point he's making about baptism is not that the water will set us free from committing sins in our lives. He's talking about the declaration of God and how we ought to see ourselves.

 

The one who has died with Christ in baptism has been declared righteous from all his sin. And since you have already died with Christ in baptism, therefore you have been declared righteous from all your sin. So, Paul says, see yourselves that way and live your life that way.

 

Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. That word consider, the same word that Paul used when he was talking about Abraham. Abraham believed God and that was credited to him as righteous.

 

God considered Abraham righteous on account of Abraham's faith. Abraham was still a sinner, but God saw him as righteous. So also, Paul says, even though we are still sinners and we will still sin, we ought to see ourselves as righteous.

 

We should not roll over and let sin sit unopposed on the throne of our lives. We shouldn't let sin have any dominion over us because we're not under sin. We're not under the law.

 

We're under grace. And that's where chapter seven begins. Not only have you died to the lordship of sin in baptism, Paul says, but you've died to the lordship of the law of Moses.

 

We're not under the law any longer, we are under grace. Just like a marriage is legally voided once one spouse dies, so also in your baptism, you have died in Christ and are no longer married to the law. But remember, Paul says, when you were married to the law, the law's purpose was never to make you right with God.

 

In fact, treating the law as if that's what makes you right with God only increases sin. Using the law as a source of personal righteousness turns God's people into self-righteous Pharisees. That doesn't mean the law is bad.

 

No, it's the opposite of that. In fact, the law is so good that people's abuse of it ends up being the best evidence there is for the power of sin. If they give it like this, Paul says, apart from the law, sin lies dead.

 

Not literally dead, more like hibernating. Your sin is still there. It's still what separates us from our lord.

 

It's still what makes us enemies of God. But apart from the struggle to keep the law, sin doesn't have to work very hard. The one who is swimming with the current doesn't know how strong the current is.

 

It's the one swimming upstream who understands the force. And so also, the one who indulges temptation without a fight has no sense of the power of that temptation. But when God's good law comes in and gives me something good, something godly to strive after in my life, well, that's when sin gets itself into gear.

 

It uses God's good law as kind of a base camp from which to launch attacks. And in so doing, we begin to get a sense of just how strong, just how insurmountable the current of sin really is, and just how quickly it will pull us out into deep water. In chapter 6, Paul says that when we were slaves to sin, we were free from righteousness, if you can call that freedom.

 

He says something similar in chapter 7. He says that at one time, he lived apart from the law, at least apart from what the law was really given to do, if you can call that living. Ironically, Paul says it was in the fulfilling of the outward expectations of the law that he was living apart from the heart of the law. When Paul thought he was keeping himself right with God through the law, that's precisely when he was really living outside of it.

 

How many times did Jesus accuse the Pharisees of the same thing? Those whitewashed tombs who were polished, clean keepers of the law on the outside, but inwardly full of dead bones. So also, when Paul thought he was living under the law, he was actually living apart from it. Hindsight is 20-20, and in retrospect, Paul saw that he was trying to use the law to accomplish something the law could never do.

 

But when he finally realized that he could not make himself right with God by means of the law, that's when sin came alive, and used the righteous law to attack him all the more. Where Paul used to think he was blameless under the law, a Pharisee of none who was righteous. Not even one.

 

He realized that the law was given so that every mouth might be stopped. The whole world held accountable to God. Was it the good law that brought this death to Paul? Of course not.

 

It was sin. Sin grabbed onto that which was good and perverted it. And now the true nature of sin is seen for what it is, and the full goodness of the law is also revealed.

 

That's what sin continues to do. For while it remains true that all who have died with Christ in baptism have been declared righteous from their sin, it also remains true that in this life we remain in the sinful flesh. The true law of God is of the spirit.

 

We are of the flesh. Paul calls us prisoners of war, the sinful flesh having been taken captive and sold in slavery to sin. And so even though Paul considered himself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus, and even though Paul would do what he could to not present his members in service to sin, the truth of his life remained that sin continued to be an ever-present reality in his actions.

 

It was frustrating for Paul. He knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to take his own advice from chapter 6, present his members to God as instruments for righteousness.

 

But he also knew that's not always what he did. And that's because even though he had been raised with Christ in baptism to walk in newness of life, he still lived in a sinful flesh this side of heaven. And nothing good dwells in us with regard to our flesh.

 

Yes, our new creation delights in the law of God, but our sinful flesh continues to wage war. And it's a distressing and exhausting and a wretched existence being the battleground for the ongoing war between the desires of a sinful flesh, the desires of a new creation. And who will deliver us from this daily struggle against a body that is destined for death? Well, Jesus will.

 

He already has. He's begun this deliverance in your baptism. And if Christ died for you while you were still his enemy, how much more, now that you're allies, will he save us from the struggle against sin on the last day? Even if we don't live in the fullness of it yet, we still consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

 

We continue to offer ourselves in service to God with our mind, even if in our flesh we still struggle against sin. And most importantly, we do not live in the fear of God's condemnation or wrath, for there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus through baptism. Paul is going to have a lot more to say about the Christian life in chapter 8, but notice how the message of chapters 6 and 7, and you'll see it in chapter 8, they all follow the same pattern.

 

Paul wants us to remember that our life is lived in what we call the time between the times, the now and the not yet. You are already, because of your baptism, already dead to sin and alive to God, to walk in newness of life. The problem is we don't see it yet.

 

It takes some effort to see ourselves the way that God says that we are. We are already dead to the law, dead to its demands, but we don't see it yet. And so we struggle against the sinful flesh, we struggle against this body of death until Jesus comes to set us free.

 

And as we'll see in the next few weeks through chapter 8, we are already free in Christ Jesus, because in Christ, God did what the law could not. But we don't see it yet. We still live in the midst of a suffering world, a fallen creation, and yet we know that the suffering of this life is not even worth comparing to the glory that's waiting to be revealed.

 

If God is for us, who can be against us? So perhaps the best thing we can take with us from today's text is simply the promise of hope, hope for the struggle. Life in this world will always include the battle with sin. And you know what? That's okay.

 

The battle doesn't define who we are. In fact, the battle shows us that there's something else at work in us. We don't just follow the current of our sinful flesh carried along by the whims of a sinful world.

 

We fight back, and when we fight back, we get dust in our face. But the great gift of our Lord is that he doesn't send us just deeper into our own hearts to see this truth. We have been united with our Lord in baptism.

 

He sees us as dead to sin and alive in him. He calls us to see ourselves that way too, and then he gives us means by which to do that. He brings us into this room where his servant stands in his stead and by his command to forgive our sins.

 

We are dead to sin and alive in him, and our Lord tells us. And he feeds us with the sacrament of this altar for the forgiveness of our sins, the strengthening of our faith. We are dead to sin and alive in him, and our Lord feeds it to us.

 

Gathered around the gifts of word and sacrament for the forgiveness of our sins, our Lord consistently, tirelessly, and eternally reminds us of who we are in him. Yes, the struggle is waiting for you when you leave this place. Temptation will come, and sin will come with it.

 

But that sin, that's not who you are. In Christ, in baptism, we are the people of God. We find our hope and our comfort in that as we wait for the life to come.

 

In Jesus' name, Amen.

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Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. And let us pray.

 

Oh Lord, send forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, our journey through Romans brings us today to Romans chapter 7, and whereas for the last few weeks we've had excerpts from chapters 4, 5, and 6, one chapter per day, the readings for the next two weeks will cover all of chapter 7. And so if you'll forgive me, it seems to me that the second half of today's reading fits better with next week's reading.

 

So if you're following along at home, today we'll just look at verses 1 through 6, and then next week turn our attention to the rest of chapter 7. So far in Romans, Paul has made it abundantly clear that by the works of the law, no human being can be made righteous in God's eyes. The law of Moses served its purpose, but that purpose was not to make Israel right with God. Even for the Israelites who lived under the law, their righteousness was given as a gift.

 

Abraham believed God, and that faith was credited to him as righteousness well before circumcision or the law was given. But make no mistake, the law of Moses was a gift to Israel. It was a big part of what set them apart as God's people, and it prepared them and through them prepared the whole world for the arrival of the Messiah.

 

But there's one aspect of that we haven't really spent much time on yet, and it's Paul's point that the law of Moses was itself a very specific iteration of a more universal law, the law of all creation. That law is a reflection of the very nature of God himself. That law is written into the design of creation.

 

That universal law gave shape to Adam and Eve's life in the garden before they sinned, and that universal law will give shape to our lives in the new and perfect creation when that day comes. That law is a reflection of who God is and who we are as his people, and when that law speaks it shows us what it looks like to live in faith toward God and love towards one another, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. And the law in that universal sense, without law applied also to the Gentiles, for it is written on the heart and the conscience of all people.

 

It's written into creation itself, and therefore when the Gentiles who did not have the Torah, who did not have the law of Moses, when they by their human nature did the very things the universal law of God requires, Paul says they became a law unto themselves. The point is simple. All who have sinned will perish because the wages of sin is death.

 

And the Jews who sinned under the law of Moses will perish under the law of Moses, and the Gentiles who sinned apart from the law of Moses perished apart from the law of Moses, but they all still perished because there's no distinction when it comes to sin. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and all are declared righteous before him as a gift through Jesus Christ. But just because the law of Moses was somehow derivative of a universal law doesn't mean that the law of Moses somehow didn't condemn the Israelites.

 

Sin against the Torah is still sin, which means, Paul says, that for the Jews, not only did they have the accumulation of their sins against God's law of nature, they added to those sins sins against the law of Moses. For example, there's nothing objectively sinful or immoral about the type of fabric you use to make your clothes. But as soon as God writes that into the law of Moses, Israel is bound to it.

 

And so the practical result of the law of Moses is not an increase in righteousness, it's an increase in sin. And Paul warns us of the same thing. Any law that we create for ourselves in the church today, any law we create for ourselves as the people of God, it's going to have the same effect.

 

It's not going to make us more righteous. It'll only increase our sin. And yet, where sin increased under the law of Moses, grace increased right along with it.

 

So that as sin reigned in death, grace might reign through the gift of righteousness that God gives his people. But Paul reminds us, don't think that because God's grace is always bigger than sin that you're somehow doing God a favor by continuing in sins that his grace may abound. Remember, you died to sin in baptism.

 

How can we who died to it live in it any longer? Yes, you'll stumble as you live in this sinful flesh, but you ought not present yourselves willingly to sin as if sin is lord of your life. It's not. Or are you somehow ignorant, Paul asks.

 

Are you ignorant of the fact that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We died with him, buried with him by baptism 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. And so, Paul says, walk in your newness of life, not to make yourselves more saved, not to earn brownie points with God, not even to appease an angry God, but simply because you have been set free from sin. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Baptism has already made you dead to sin. Not only to sin, Paul says, but also dead to the law of Moses. That's his point in today's text.

 

He reminds us that the law is binding on a person only as long as that person lives, but you have died in baptism. So, dead through the body of Christ, we now belong to something different, something other than the law of Moses. Just like marriage is binding only as both parties are alive, so also the lordship of the law ends when someone dies.

 

The lordship of the law of Moses was binding on God's people until someone died and put an end to that arrangement. Now that Jesus has died to fulfill the law of Moses, and now that in your baptism you have died with him, we too have died to the law of Moses. That law is no longer lord over the people of God.

 

We are released from that which held us captive so that we might serve God in a new way, serve in the way of the Spirit and not in the way of the old written letters. That brings us to the end of verse 6, and admittedly it's kind of an awkward place to pause, but to go any farther we have to go all the way to the end of the chapter, so we'll save that for next week. Today I just want you to notice how similar chapter 7 is to chapter 6, which we heard last week.

 

The language is similar; the structure is almost identical. Both of them start with the phrase, or do you not know, before introducing a concept of freedom that comes through death. Both chapters include something about the significance of Christ being the one raised from the dead, and what that means for those of us who are joined to him.

 

Both speak about life under an old master, and about the renewal and the new life that we have under a new Lord. And so ultimately both chapters taken together place the gift of baptism squarely before our eyes. Simply put, baptism changes everything.

 

It's the end of something old; it's the start of something new. Water was the end of life and slavery in Egypt, and the start of life as the people of God, who had God's tabernacle and had his altar. Water was the end of wandering in the wilderness, and the start of life in the land that God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

 

Water was the end of life in a world where the only desire of mankind's heart was only evil all the time, and it was the start of a new creation for Noah and his sons. Throughout the Scriptures, water is the end of something old and the start of something new, and that's what your baptism is for you. Paul proclaims in Romans that baptism is the end of slavery to sin, and the start of a new life as servants of the true God.

 

It's an end to life under the demands of the law of Moses, and the beginning of life under a new way of doing things, the new way of the Spirit, not the old written codes. But the thing about the sinful flesh is, the sinful flesh loves those written codes. It loves the law, loves the letters, because the sinful flesh understands the law.

 

It can use written codes to measure itself against others, to judge others for their failure to comply, for their shortcomings, to justify itself in its own eyes. And so the sinful flesh will always create laws for itself to follow. We might not be held liable to the clothing laws of the Old Testament.

 

We might not bind ourselves to the worship calendar or the sacrificial system any longer, but the sinful flesh is forever creating new laws, because the sinful flesh loves to condemn others and justify itself. And maybe even those laws and those new codes aren't even specifically religious sounding. Maybe we have created the law of status, the law of wealth, the law of comfort or reputation.

 

The sinful flesh will grab onto anything it can use to compare itself to others. Paul's point in today's text remains before us. Baptism changes that, because baptism changes everything.

 

It certainly doesn't undo the nature of God's design for creation. Baptism doesn't do away with the universal law, doesn't somehow make the Ten Commandments optional. But what it does is it silences any attempt to use any law of any kind to justify myself before God.

 

Baptism is the end of scorekeeping. It's the end of comparison. It's the end of trying to decode the circumstances of our lives as if they somehow show us most reliably what God thinks of me.

 

Baptism is the end of that way of thinking and living, and it's a start of something new. It's birth into what Paul calls the newness of life. A life that receives God's design for creation as a gift.

 

A life that receives our vocations and the life lived there as a gift. A life spent serving our neighbor in love, doing the best we can, and then finding our rest in the promise of the gospel. Baptism gives us a life free from comparison and free from scorekeeping.

 

Each of us is called simply to live the best we can in our vocations, but it's not our successes or failures there that determine our worth before God. Remember, he has brought peace between heaven and earth through the death of his son, and he joyfully showers that forgiveness upon you through his word of hope proclaimed to you through his promise of forgiveness and reconciliation. With the bread and wine of this very altar, the gift of the body and blood of Christ himself, our Lord forgives you and strengthens you for a new life lived in your vocations.

 

Paul certainly has a lot more to say about what that looks like and the struggle that we'll find waiting for us there. That's for next week. Today, simply rejoice in your baptism.

 

Find your comfort there, because baptism changes everything. Your baptism has made you a new person. It has given you a new life, a life united to your Savior.

 

And in that life, he is your strength, and he is your hope, and he will never let you go. May God grant it to us for Jesus' sake. Amen.

 

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Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Let us pray.

 

O Lord, send forth your word into our ears, that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, our journey through Romans has brought us to Romans chapter 6. The heart of Paul's message in the letter so far has been that while circumcision and the law of Moses separated Jews and Gentiles in the way they went about their earthly lives, when it comes to a person's status before God himself, there is no distinction.

 

For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and all have been declared righteous by his grace as a gift, through the redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ our Lord. The sin of Jews and Gentiles alike put all humanity at odds with God. Sin put God and people on opposite sides of a cosmic struggle.

 

In our sin, we were enemies of God, but God showed his love for us, and that while we were enemies, while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. Christ died for you. And since the hostility between humans and God has been removed by Christ, since we are now reconciled to God, we are at peace with him instead of enemies, since therefore we have been justified by the blood of Christ here and now, we have confidence that we will be ushered into the full gift of salvation when the last day comes.

 

Peace for today, hope for tomorrow. That's what we have in Christ Jesus our Lord. Then Paul ended chapter 5 by demonstrating that the law of Moses did not make the Jews righteous, it actually had the opposite effect.

 

Sin is not counted against a person, whether there is no law. And so Noah, or Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they were not expected to obey the requirements given at Sinai. However, once they had the expectations through Moses, then God's people were accountable to them.

 

And the result wasn't an increase in righteousness, it was an increase in sin. Where there is more expectation, there is more failure. And yet where sin increased under the law of Moses, grace increased all the more, because even all that extra sin was still covered by the death of Jesus.

 

And that's where chapter 6 picks up, with Paul asking the rhetorical question, if grace increased for the Jews when their sin increased under the law of Moses, what about us? What about those who are not bound by the law of Moses? What should we say? Should we continue in sin so that grace will also abound among us? And his answer to his own rhetorical question is firm and direct. May it never be so. And his reason is actually quite simple.

 

We've died to sin in baptism. It's already happened. How could we who have died to sin continue to live in it? And not only did we die to sin in our baptism, but also in that water, we were raised to a new life in Christ, a life that we already live here and now.

 

And so, Paul says, consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. But what does that mean? What does it mean to consider yourself dead to sin? That's where today's reading picks up. Because you are dead to sin and alive to God, we ought not let sin reign in our mortal bodies.

 

And the word reign is the key. The sin will always be there this side of heaven. Temptation will persist in the fallen world, but we ought not listen to the passions of the sinful flesh.

 

For we are no longer just people dead in trespasses and sins. We have been made alive in Christ, made alive to walk in newness of life. Because we are baptized, there is something in us, the Holy Spirit in us, something that wants to fight back against sin.

 

So let it fight, Paul says. Let not sin sit unopposed on the throne of your heart and your life. Of course we will still stumble, and of course we will still sin, but we ought not approach life by throwing up our arms and hopelessly or helplessly presenting our members as instruments for unrighteousness.

 

No, we present our members to God, and he uses them for righteousness. We are united to Christ in baptism. Christ now lives in you, and so sin will no longer be your Lord and master.

 

For you are not under the law, Paul says, but under grace. You have a lot more to say about that in chapter 7. Before he gets there, he leaves us with one more image, that of slavery. And his message is clear and simple.

 

Everyone is serving something, and we are slaves to the one that we obey. The root for the Greek word translated as obey is actually to listen. And a more literal translation might be something along the lines of under the listening.

 

So, Paul's point is that we either live under listening to sin, or we live under listening to Jesus. Make no mistake, you will live under listening to something. We either listen to and follow sin, which Paul says leads to death, or we listen to and follow Jesus, which leads to righteousness.

 

Before the free gift of God's grace, we didn't have a choice. We had no option except to be slaves to sin. But in Christ, Paul says, we have been rescued from slavery to sin and handed over to God to become slaves of righteousness.

 

For when we were slaves of sin, Paul says, we were free from righteousness. But what kind of freedom is that? It ends in death. But now we have been set free from sin and instead are slaves in the house of God, and that ends in eternal life.

 

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. That's the end of chapter 6. So, as we seek to understand what this means for us today, perhaps it's best to start at the end with the image of slavery. Because we don't like the image of slavery.

 

We're Americans. We're coming up on the 250th anniversary of our nation's independence. Just think about our art and our literature and our movies.

 

We romanticize the individual who throws off the shackles of their culture or their upbringing, who chases their dreams and follows their heart. We don't want anyone telling us what to do. We want to see ourselves as the master of our own fate, the captain of our own destiny.

 

And in truth, if we listen to ourselves, we often sound a lot like the Pharisees who told Jesus they were children of Abraham and had never been enslaved to anyone. Jesus's answer to them is his answer to us. And it's Paul's point in Romans 6. All who sin are slaves to sin, whether they want to be or not.

 

Freedom is found only in the Son. And if the Son sets you free, then you are free indeed. You are free.

 

The Son has set you free. But as Luther would write in his great work, The Freedom of a Christian, our freedom in Christ is nuanced. It's almost a paradoxical freedom.

 

For in Christ, we are perfectly free, slaves to nothing. And in Christ, we are perfectly bound, enslaved to all. In Christ, we are perfectly free.

 

He's made the atonement for our sin. There's no expectation left. There's nothing remaining for us to do.

 

The righteousness that God gives is seen apart from any works of the law. And this righteousness is ours right now. In Christ, you are already reconciled with God.

 

In Christ, you are free. And yet, we still live in this world. And so while we're here, what do we do with the freedom Christ has given? And Paul says elsewhere, do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love, serve one another.

 

He's saying the same thing here in Romans 6. Our freedom in Christ is not only freedom from sin and the terror of death, it's also freedom to live as we were created. You don't set the fish free from water. True freedom for the fish is only found in the water, where it can live as it was created to be.

 

And so also for us. Freedom is not found in selfishness, licentiousness. It's not found outside our vocations.

 

Freedom is found in our vocations. It's found in the water. In being those we were created to be, being the people we were redeemed to be.

 

Our earthly, creaturely, embodied freedom is found in loving service to the neighbor. We love and serve God by loving and serving the people that he puts into our lives, in our families, in our workplace, any daily interactions. Will we be perfect in those interactions? No.

 

Will we continue to struggle with the reality of the sinful flesh? Of course. But Paul encourages us that when we look at that struggle, when we face that struggle, when temptation is standing before us, we remember our baptism and we consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. When temptation comes, when sin seems like the right option, we remember Paul's words.

 

How can we who died to sin live in it any longer? We remember that sin is not our master. It does not reign over us any longer. We serve the Lord of heaven and earth.

 

And so, we offer our hands and our words and our lives not as instruments for sin, but as instruments for righteousness. We do battle against the sin of our lives and we seek to live faithfully within our vocations. And when we fail, because there's no doubt that we will, we still remember our baptism.

 

We find comfort in our Lord's promise of forgiveness. We find comfort in our Lord's word of forgiveness and restoration, spoken by the one who stands in his stead and who speaks by his command. We find comfort in the body and blood of our Savior, given from this altar to forgive our sins, to strengthen us for lives as his people.

 

We find our confidence in his promise. His promise that our success or our failure in our vocations, that's not what makes us right with him. It's not our success or our failure in our vocation that's the source of our peace for today or the source of our hope for tomorrow.

 

Christ is our hope. And because our hope belongs to him, we know it's certain and it will not fail. But just because we don't save ourselves through our vocations doesn't mean those vocations are irrelevant.

 

That's Paul's point. The righteousness that God gives through Christ, it changes the way we live. It changes the way we look at the world and we look at our place in it.

 

Because we are the baptized children of God, dead to sin and alive in him. And so we live each day in the freedom of faith toward him, fervent love toward one another. We wake up each morning, do the best we can in our vocations, and we go to sleep in peace, resting in the confidence that when it's all said and done, it's our Lord who will see us safely home.

 

Because our righteousness comes as a gift from him. Dead to sin, alive to God, free to live in our vocations and the freedom of the gospel, immune from any terrors of the conscience, because our Lord has made us his own. May God grant it among us for Jesus' sake.

 

Amen.

 

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Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Let us pray.

 

Oh Lord, send forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus' name. Amen. Last week we began our summer-long journey through Romans, journey which we continue today, and truth be told, a journey which I was so focused on the Romans text that I didn't realize we had chosen a longer gospel reading for this morning, and didn't read the whole thing that's in your bulletin.

 

That's on me, I apologize for that. Last week we looked at the beginning of the book of Romans. We heard Paul give us his theme for the letter, the sun around which the entire letter orbits, the righteous one lives from faith.

 

We heard Paul expound on the nature of righteousness. He wrote that God alone is righteous, and that because he is righteous, God cannot turn a blind eye to sin. God showed his righteousness by writing it into creation itself, written on the heart, on the conscience of every person, Jew and Gentile alike.

 

He said the law of Moses was not given to the Jews to make them righteous, but to take away all their excuses. The law was given so that every mouth might be stopped. And not only the Jews, but the whole world held accountable to God.

 

And neither is righteousness given through circumcision, for Abraham was declared righteous before circumcision or the law of Moses ever even existed. Instead, God grants righteousness to people through faith, apart from the works of the law of Moses, apart from circumcision, apart from any human work of any kind. Circumcision and the law may have served their God-given purpose, but that purpose was not to make people righteous.

 

The righteousness of God has been revealed apart from the law of Moses, in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as the sacrifice to reconcile God and man. There is no distinction between Jew and Gentile. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and all are declared righteous by his grace as a gift of God through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Paul then begins chapter 5 with these words. Therefore, because we have been declared righteous by faith, we now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have access by faith into his grace in which we stand. We boast in the hope of the glory of God.

 

Peace for today, hope for the future. These are the gifts that are now ours according to Paul, due to the fact that we have been declared righteous by God himself. This peace, it's not peacefulness as in tranquility.

 

It's not like sitting by the river with a cup of coffee, listening to the babbling of the water on the rocks. No, this is more like peace between nations. This is a ceasefire, an end to the hostilities.

 

It's an acknowledgement that we are no longer enemies of God, not after the reconciliation accomplished by Jesus. We're at peace with God. And because we are at peace with God, we have access to him in a way that enemies never would.

 

Access into the full measure of God's grace, into his kindness and favor, instead of wrath and judgment. And this fills us with hope for the future, hope for how our story ends. Because even if the details of our lives are difficult right now, we can rejoice.

 

Even in our suffering, because we know that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope will never let us down, because hope doesn't depend on us. Hope depends on the love of God, which he poured out into our hearts when he gave us his spirit. And that's where today's reading picks up.

 

We can have such confidence in our hope for the future, because we know it depends not on our ability to keep some kind of law. It depends on the faithfulness and the love of the righteous God, who will not break his promises. For God showed his love for us, not by dying for his allies, but by dying for his enemies, in order to make them into allies.

 

And that is what we are now, allies of God. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us, but we are now at peace. And since we are at peace with God through the blood of Christ, we rest in the certainty that we will be saved from the wrath to come.

 

The world will always tempt us to despair. The world will always hold before our eyes the fact that death awaits us all. Adam wasn't created to die, but death entered creation after Adam sinned.

 

So also, for us, death awaits us. And that death is the result of, and ultimately the proof of, the sins we have committed. And being free of the law of Moses, that's not going to bring us any comfort, because it's not like its only violations against the law of Moses that count as sin.

 

Death already reigned in creation from the time of Adam until the time the law of Moses was given. To a certain extent, the sin of Adam and the sins of the Jews under the law of Moses were similar, because in both cases, people were sinning against a clearly spoken Word of God. The Jews had the law of Moses, Adam had the command about the trees, and both sinned against the Word they had been given.

 

But death reigned over all people, even over those whose sinning was not like that of Adam, not against an explicit Word of the Lord. Thus, sin existed before the law of Moses. Now, obviously, before the law of Moses, you're not held accountable for breaking the law of Moses.

 

You can't break a law that doesn't exist yet. A person's not going to be given a speeding ticket where there is no speed limit, but as soon as the speed limit is set, anyone who drives on that road, well, they're accountable to it. So also, the law of Moses.

 

Sin against the law of Moses might not have been counted as sin before the law was given, but that doesn't mean sins against the law of Moses aren't really sins. Anything done against a clearly spoken Word of God is sin, including breaking the law of Moses when it was in effect. But neither does it mean there's no sin outside the law of Moses.

 

We know there was sin outside the law of Moses because death reigned from Adam to Moses, even before the giving of the law. And yet trespasses and sins are not all there is. There's also the free gift of God's righteousness poured out on us.

 

For while the trespass of Adam set into motion the pattern of all people moving from life to death on account of their sin, Jesus flipped the script. Jesus moves us from death to life. For if death reigned through Adam, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of God's righteousness, much more will they reign in life through Jesus.

 

The law of Moses has nothing to do with it. When the law came, it didn't make people righteous. It increased sin by increasing the expectations placed on people.

 

But even those extra sins are all still forgiven by Christ. So even though sin increased, grace increased even more. In Christ, where death once reigned among the descendants of Adam, now life gets the last word through Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

That brings us to the end of chapter 5. Paul will have much more to say about the law and righteousness and its place in the Christian life from the chapters to come, but two things stand out today. First, in Christ, none of us get what we deserve. None of us.

 

We live in a world that seems to idolize the idea of fairness, equity, or fair treatment. And it's easy for us to feel like victims of some sort of personal or systemic injustice in our lives or in the world. The temptation is to use that supposed injustice to excuse away all manner of sin and all manner of failure.

 

But Paul leaves us no wiggle room before God. Adam's sin resulted in his death. Our sin will too.

 

And so, we confess at the beginning of today's service that we deserve God's punishment, not only eternally when the last day comes, but even here and now. Temporal and eternal punishment. That's what I deserve.

 

But in Christ, none of us gets what we deserve. And thanks be to God for that. For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for us who are ungodly, for us who are enemies of God, for us who deserve punishment.

 

And so, where we deserve abandonment, exile, in Christ, our Lord gathers us together into his church and claims us as his own. Where we deserve wrath and condemnation, our Lord looks upon us with grace and forgiveness. Where we deserve temporal and eternal punishment, instead we get temporal and eternal blessings.

 

Peace in this life, hope for the life to come. That's the second thing we can take from Paul's words in Romans 5. We gain more in Christ than we lost in Adam. Paul calls Adam a type of Christ, meaning Adam is a foreshadowing of Christ, who he would be and what he would do.

 

And the Old Testament is filled with such types. It's called typology. Like the Red Sea or the Jordan River as types of baptism, the sacrificial system of the tabernacle as a type of the cross and the atonement.

 

But most of the typology in the Old Testament has what we might call positive correlation, meaning the type foreshadows something that'll be similar but somehow better in Jesus. And so, the deliverance through water at the Red Sea was good, the deliverance through water of baptism be even better. Paul does something a little different here.

 

Here, Adam isn't a type of Christ by doing something Jesus would eventually do but just do it better. Adam's a type by being the opposite of Jesus. It's a negative correlation, almost an anti-type.

 

Where if many died through Adam's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus, much more have they abounded for many. And if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more were those who received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reigned in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as Adam's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so Jesus' act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

 

For as by Adam's disobedience many were made sinners, so by Jesus' obedience the many are made righteous. Paul makes it clear. We gain more in Jesus than we lost in Adam.

 

In Christ, we do not get what we deserve. Instead, we get peace. We get reconciliation with God here and now, peace for today, and we have the certain hope of the resurrection into the new imperfect creation when that time comes.

 

Hope for the future. So, over the next few weeks we'll hear more and more about what it means for our daily lives and relationships, but for today, simply rest in the comfort of knowing you have a God who died for you while you were still enemies. And since we have already been declared righteous by the blood of Jesus, we have the confidence that we will receive the fullness of that reconciliation when the time comes.

 

So, no matter what life throws at us, no matter what struggles you face, we live every day and we face every challenge with hope that sustains us. For God is righteous, he is faithful, and he has made a promise to you, and he will see it through. In Jesus' name, Amen.