I want to make sure I drive home the takeaway point here. It is the great and abundant forgiveness we have received that IS our death. If we make light of our forgiveness, it muddies the water of our ‘baptism’ into His death, and the whole foundation that Paul builds his ideas about sanctification and Christian living upon become shaky. Abundant and complete justification is the key to everything else, and we dare not water it down.
I finally realized something that has been staring me in the face for years. Paul answers his own question in Romans 6:1 very strangely:
1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6
He says, don’t you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Really? All of us? I was supposed to know this? I’m thumbing back through Romans 3, Romans 4, Romans 5, and call me stupid, but I don’t see this. Should I have known this? I’m thumbing back through, but I don’t see it. When does this part kick in? We are granted redemption as a free gift, and while we were yet sinners Christ died for us, but I don’t see the part where we DIED also. Where is it?
Here is what has hit me. When we think of redemption, we fall all over ourselves trying to prove that it isn’t just about forgiveness. We find ourselves saying things like this:
- The gospel transforms us!
- The gospel makes us holier!
- The gospel is the engine of our sanctification!
- The gospel isn’t about what you do, but it does make you do stuff!
We think that mere forgiveness is too simple, too easy, too good to be true. We feel we can’t have this sloppy agape. We have to qualify that we’re not talking about mere fire insurance here. We are falling all over ourselves to run past forgiveness to get to the part where the gospel is the engine of our sanctification. It is true that the gospel is the engine of our sanctification, but I think we run too hard, we downplay our justification too easily. This lust to downplay forgiveness, to qualify it, to play up our “sanctification”, is not the energy of the Spirit but of the flesh. Our forgiveness is and always will be central to us.
Let’s do a thought experiment. Suppose His cross really is about forgiveness, scandalous delirious 100% eternal all-the-way forgiveness. Real forgiveness. Everything you have done, everything you currently have ongoing, everything you ever will do. All of it. Complete forgiveness, complete acceptance. All the just wrath you have incurred or will ever incur has been demonstrated with finality to be true evil, and justice is satisfied. Our sin is more than abundantly condemned already. It is finished. It is complete. There isn’t one tiny shred of anything that doesn’t come under that banner for you. It is all over, all dealt with. Let’s review Romans 3:19-31:
21 But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith
Now, if this is so, there is nothing we must do. Nothing. Not one thing. NOTHING. There is not one shred of obligation we owe. Our efforts are finished. They are unneeded. If we offer them as evidence of our merit, they are in fact as nauseatingly wrong as the guy who offered Peter money for the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-24). We can cease from our labors. Our efforts are so done with, so laid to rest, that we can actually call this death. His cross, our forgiveness, our great salvation, is our death. This complete and utter justification of us has achieved a rest from our striving to prove ourselves, to achieve some kind of noticeable or distinguishing merit for ourselves, to accomplish a special favor in God’s eyes. There is no greater notice than to die for someone. If someone sacrifices their own life for me, I think they noticed me. We don’t need more notice, we can stop worrying about that.
In essence, His propitiatory death is the very thing which has achieved our death. We think there is some mysterious other work wherein the Holy Spirit causes a death to self or some such. Obviously I am not downplaying the work of the Holy Spirit in us. But Paul is not saying that the Holy Spirit achieves some kind of gradual dying to self through ongoing sanctification. He is very very consistent on this point. If we are a Christian at all, we HAVE DIED. It is done, it is already so, it always mentioned as past tense and completed (Romans 6:3-4, Eph 1:7, Col 3:3). There is no second or different or other sanctifying work that achieves our death. The act of belief in Christ, in His propitiating death for our sins, is alone the agent that achieves our death.
The only reason we balk at this is because we make too little of Christ’s cross, and too much of our efforts. We soil our sanctification by making far too much of our efforts and far too little of His efforts. How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? (Hebrews 2:1-3) We do neglect it, and this is the whole problem. We gloss over it, we make light of it, when this is our very treasure, the one thing we have and need and the one thing the dying world cries out for.
I want to make sure I drive home the takeaway point here. It is the great and abundant forgiveness we have received that IS our death. If we make light of our forgiveness, it muddies the water of our ‘baptism’ into His death, and the whole foundation that Paul builds his ideas about sanctification and Christian living upon become shaky. Abundant and complete justification is the key to everything else, and we dare not water it down.
So, now our Romans 6 question is very intense indeed isn’t it? Shall we sin all the more that grace might increase? How will you answer that, my dear friends? How shall we then live?
The reality of forgiveness is clear if we just read what Paul wrote in Romans 5:11-12. We were (and still are) the helpless and rebellious sinners for whom Christ died and atoned for. I think the very reality of this kind of forgiveness prompts the question “Should we sin more?”. In a way we could sin more and we still sin more.
However, I think Paul’s answer is that the point of Christ’s death wasn’t that we would have a permission to sin more. The point is that in the reality of our forgiveness of sins and the union with Christ we can start living a new life with Him and with the power the Spirit.
The point of perfect of forgiveness is that we can start living a highly imperfect, still sin affected new life. I emphasize the CAN, because the newness of life is not an automatic result of justification but a renewal process that requires our cooperation (Rom 6:12-13, Rom 12:1-2).
I think it is great that “we are to consider ourselves DEAD TO SIN”
In Baptism (Romans 6, as you have already rightly pointed out) the Lord puts our sinful self to death…and raises us to new life…totally apart from anything that we do, say, feel, or think.
That’s why it is such great news! If it depended on us in any way, then it would not be good news at all.
Thanks.
I agree of course that it is good to consider ourselves dead to sin. I’m saying something different here. There are some peculiarities to Paul’s wording that is a clue to something else. He doesn’t say only that we should consider ourselves to be dead to sin. (He does say that, Romans 6:11)
He says, “you have died.” (Col 3:3). We HAVE BEEN baptized into His death (Romans 6:3) We don’t have to try to die, it is done, it is past, it is complete. This is something that is supposed to have been obvious to us – “Do you not know?”
Since we are completely saved from all judgement through Christ’s blood, there is nothing left for us to do to justify ourselves. This lack of need for action altogether IS our death. The dead take no actions; as Robert Capon says, the effortlessness of death is the touchstone of our faith. Belief in the sufficiency of His blood in fact is the genesis and substance of our baptism into death. It isn’t partial and it isn’t a process. It is complete. It may take time for us to realize the full meaning of it, but this is like a 4 year old who inherited a great fortune. The child doesn’t know what they have, but this does not change the fact that they have it.
You see what I’m saying?
The other thing I meant to mention is that without a full and complete death, a true end of all obligation and effort and every possible nuance of law, there cannot be a proper resurrection.