Romans 6.1-11
“Should we continue to sin in order that grace may abound?” St Paul answers his own question in today’s second reading with a resounding ‘no,’ as you heard. Paul rejects the idea that making sin a habit leads to more grace. But it’s hard, in English, to capture the depth that ‘no.’ “By no means!” is how our translation puts it (with an exclamation point for added effect). Others say, ‘Absolutely not.’ Still others, ‘What a ghastly thought. No, no, no!’ Paul’s answer is the same that you’d give to someone asking the question, ‘Should I continue to set fire to my house so I can see the firefighters do their amazing work?’ Would that ever cross your mind, even if you knew the trucks would show up again and again? Continuing in self-destructive ways is a truly bad idea.
To explore what Paul is getting at, let’s put a biblical story to Paul’s question. Hold today’s second reading from Romans next to Jesus’ familiar parable of the Prodigal Son. You remember: the younger son essentially wishes his father dead by demanding his share of the inheritance and family property even while the father is still alive; then he goes off and squanders it all on what amounts to a biblical version of a bender in Las Vegas. He hits bottom, wishes he could eat the food tossed in the bin behind the casino, then he turns toward home in utter disgrace. Yet to his astonishment, as he gets close to home, he sees his father running down the road to meet him full of grace. The father throws a huge party in his honor: ring, robe, fatted calf. Remember what the father said, “We had to celebrate because this son of mine was dead and is now alive again.” He has passed from death to life, even as he lives.
Now use your imagination to write a sequel to that parable. Set it in the future a couple years later. Everybody is a bit older, a bit wiser. Maybe a bit wiser. Life has returned to its typical daily routine. But with that comes the tedium that is also a part of everyone’s everyday life; you can’t feast and party every day. Even so, would it ever even cross your mind for the sequel to have the younger son look back on the day he returned home from Sin City to the embrace of the father’s forgiveness and say to himself, ‘Maybe I should try that again. There’s still some property left to squander. Flights to Vegas are cheap. When I came back last time, it really was a good party.’
“Should we continue to sin in order that grace may abound?” Shall we sin to our heart’s content and see how far we can exploit the grace of God? ‘No, no, no! Ghastly thought.’ Only that’s not because there’s an annual limit to grace, or even a lifetime limit. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,” says Jeremiah in Lamentations; “his mercies never come to an end.” The gifts the father gave when the squandering son returned—robe, ring, and fatted calf—didn’t come with an ankle monitor to keep the son from straying in the future. No. Something else is at work. And for us to get to what that ‘something else’ is means now going back to the letter of Romans and the chapter before today’s second reading begins.
In the fifth chapter of Romans, Paul considers the pervasive power of sin. Sin, as the catechism of the prayer book describes it, is the seeking of our own will instead of God’s and how that distorts our relationships with God and with other people. In Romans, Paul sees how this power—how sin—pervades every one of our lives. Yet he also sees what God has done about it. This was the theme of last week’s second reading. “While we were sinners, Christ died for us.” “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” Note again the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the abounding grace of the father.
Only does that mean for us to keep experiencing abounding grace of God, we should make habit of sinning? Today, that is the last thing that should be on our minds. Don’t think of sin as a capital venture that yields a great return on investment; that won’t get you anything more than you already have. The God who cares for sparrows, cares for you from the beginning, Jesus says in the gospel. Like the father in the parable of the Prodigal, the new life of grace in God is the ruling factor of your life. “Should we continue to sin in order that grace may abound?” Of course not. Grace abounds from the beginning. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.”
Now it is not always easy to feel that forgiveness; not always apparent that mercy guides us and is given to us. I am sure that the reason Jesus tells us that the God who cares for sparrows cares for us is because we need to be assured of God’s care, especially in times of doubt. Paul wants to assure us of our place in God’s life, too. And he does that today as he talks about Baptism and the abounding grace given to us there. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death,” Paul says today. “So that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” The water and word of Holy Baptism are the headwaters of overflowing grace.
Baptism, far from being a mere sentimental ceremony, is the real and present pledge of God’s work in our life; the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace; the sure and certain means by which we receive that grace. Like the Prodigal Son who was dead and is restored to life, people who are baptized, ‘die with Christ’ and are ‘raised to new life.’ This newness of life will one day be brought to overflowing with unending life in God and the age to come; but this newness of life begins for you now. You have passed from death to new life even now as you live. Continue in sin? No, no, no! That’s not going to get you anything you don’t already have because your life right now overflows with abounding grace. And grace is the guiding truth of your life.
The scriptures want us always to see our life in the light of the grace and love of God already given. Yet for what that means for daily living, Paul, of all biblical saints, remains realistic. We are in Christ, but the power of sin is still at work in us. It sticks to us like a burr that latches to your clothes when you’re on a hike. A chapter after today’s passage about baptism in Romans, Paul describes what we all know: even as we walk in newness of life, we still stumble, trip, and fall. There are times when we want to do the good things that God desires but do the very opposite: the seeking of our own will instead of God’s. Or as Paul puts it, “I find myself not doing what I really want to do but doing what I really loathe…When I want to do right, only the wrong is within my reach.” Yet our wrongs don’t set a limit on the reach of God’s forgiveness, will never set a limit on the reach of forgiveness. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.” But to make sin a habit? Inconceivable.
Today, Paul wants you to calculate and weigh out the truth of your life with the greater truth of Christ’s life given to you in Baptism. And from those calculations, take stock of the abounding grace that God gives you. “So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” We will, as long as we live, fall back into sins; this is a reality for each of us. But Paul is saying there’s no need for sin to rule your life.
Your participation in Christ—united with him in a death and resurrection like his through Baptism—is God’s gift for you. Christ’s forgiveness is stronger than sin; Christ’s life is stronger than death; your life is in Christ, and abounding grace is yours today. You can weigh out and calculate the sins, brokenness, and hurts that you bring to worship and to confession week to week. And, even as you consider it all, you can trust that in Christ the scales are always tipped to the side of grace and forgiveness and new life for you. And in that new life, the notion of continuing in sin—as if that will get you more grace and forgiveness—really can be the furthest thing from your mind, You have passed from death to new life, even now as you live. And from the grace that makes you new and renews you, you can live in a new way, a way of courageous obedience to Jesus. Remember who you are in Jesus Christ and make that life your aim.
“What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 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.”
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