Romans 6:1-23 – Andrew Linn
Should Christians be good and do good thing? If so, why?
Several answers can come up in response: we need to be good to earn God’s favour and go to heaven; we need to be good to stay in God’s favour; we need to be good so that God will bless us – he will answer our prayers and give us what we ask for; we need to be good to attract others to church – it works for PR.
Others may wonder why I am even asking the question. Even those outside of the church know Christians should be good; it is not even up for debate.
Well, if any of the above answers struck a note with you, I will respectfully challenge that you may have missed the full implications of the gospel message that Paul brings in Romans.
Paul started his argument in 1:18 with a declaration that the wrath of God is being revealed because of sin and has argued that all; Jew and Gentile; are under God’s wrath. The gospel, the good news, that Paul is speaking about is introduced from 3:21 “Now a righteousness from God [] has been made known” coming “through faith in Jesus Christ to all”.
This is the heart of Pauls message, that Jew and Gentile alike are set right with God through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus. The great gift from God; the gift of grace. All we are to do is trust in Jesus for salvation. No works needed. Our standing before God has nothing to do with what we do, past, present or future. We do not have to do anything to earn it. We are not just saved from past sins and from that point need to keep a clean slate. We do not work up some God brownie point system.
Salvation from God through the work of Jesus is complete, total, final, done, the moment we turn to Jesus and trust in him for salvation. As an implication of this, our actions have no bearing, good or bad, on our final acceptance before God
Why then should we be good? Especially in the times when the options to be good is the hard path
This question is also the heart of chapter 6. Indeed, Paul’s imaginary questioner goes one step further 6:1 “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase?” On the basis we are saved by faith, and God’s grace is shown through forgiveness, should we not keep on sinning so God can show more of his grace. As poet W H Auden put it “I like committing crimes. God likes forgiving them. Really the world is admirably arranged”.
To that question Paul’s answer is a straight no. For him the question comes again from a misunderstanding of salvation. Paul says that when a person gives themselves by faith to Jesus, symbolised in baptism, there is a fundament change which takes place. So fundamental that he uses the picture of death and resurrection.
In chapter 5 Paul has finished his explanation of salvation in Jesus by saying there are now two status or realms a person could be in: the life in Adam which is characterised by sin and death; the life in Christ which is characterised by righteousness and life. The Christian has moved from the realm of Adam to that of Christ. There is a change of status and place.
Just as Jesus died on the cross and was buried, the “Adam” of us; sin and death; died and were buried with him. Just as Jesus was raised to life on the third day, so we are raised to new life in Christ; to be fulfilled when we have the bodily resurrection to be with him.
Paul says, if we have died to the old life, why in the world would we want to live the ways of that old life? It is not who we are anymore. Sin and death belong to the old way of things. Righteousness and life are the way of Christ. That is who we now are and hence how we should live.
But when Paul talks about dying with Christ what does he mean? Even our own experience of life shows this cannot mean that sin has no influence on us anymore. Paul acknowledges this when he urges Christians not to let sin reign. There is clearly a possibility that, even for the Christian, it can.
We live in what is described as the “now and not yet time”. Salvation is a reality now but is not fully experienced yet, as it one day will be. We still live in a world where sin has power. We ourselves still experience internal and external temptation. We do continue to fail and to sin. Our fundamental status has changed but our experience of the reality of this may take time.
There was a story of missionaries who adopted a local girl into their family. Despite her change of status, despite everything saying she was their child, despite treating here the same as their other children, there was something stand-off-ish about her at the beginning. She was taking time to get used to the new situation.
Then one day as her adoptive father was working, she came up to him and said, “daddy I need some new shoelaces” and his heart melt. She was acting as a daughter in the family, living into her new status.
So too we can tend to live to the old ways not as children of our heavenly father. It takes us time to live into this new status. We still have old tendencies, attitudes, habits which need to change over time.
The death to sin is a death to the power of sin over our lives. v6 & 7 “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.”
Ultimately the power sin has over us, is the punishment of sin, death. Since we are now, and will be in a final way, raised with Christ, death no longer has any hold of us.
Perhaps one way of looking at this is thinking about how we react should a police officer suddenly stop us. If we have broken no laws, then we have nothing to fear. They have no power over us, in that legal sense. Similarly, because we have been declared right with God in Jesus, when the accuser comes, there is no case to answer.
Yes, our sin may have other consequences, and we still must deal with these, but we can move on knowing that forgiveness is through Jesus. Hence, we keep short accounts and come often in repentance, regularly acknowledging the basis for our new life in Christ.
On the other side Paul says we are now alive in Christ. v4 “just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
As we have said this is something we do not fully experience now, bodily resurrection is still in the future for us, yet the new life in Christ is from the moment we come to faith as we live out who we are in Christ. Paul is at pains to point out this distinction between the former life of death and the new life of life
Living the way of Jesus, doing as He would do, is living the way of life. The things of this way of life are the things that bring the life we truly yearn for. It is not that we walk in the way of Jesus, do good things, out of fear or to somehow earn something from God. It is because it is who we now are and it is the way that leads to the life, deep down, we desire.
The hard part, as Paul knows, is that the old ways can see attractive. This is part of the first temptation in the bible, that of Eve in the garden. The temptation that says “actually God is holding something back; there is another way which will give you what you want”
We can find ourselves putting something else in the place God should have as first in our lives. Hence Paul’s warning to the Romans and us v12 “do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.” Even good things can become bad when they reign over us: career, family, friends, sports, whatever.
Instead, we are to “offer [ourselves] to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of [ourselves] to him as an instrument of righteousness.”
The question “why should a Christian be good?” is one that has meaning through the nature of salvation. God accepts us through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus alone, no works are required; we do not need to be good.
But in accepting us, in saving us, we are transformed from the old life of sin and death to a new life in Christ of righteousness and faith, we are changed, a new creation. It makes no sense to live according to that old life. The life we now have is Christ-like and this is how we are to live.
Further, the ways of sin lead to death are not the life we truly yearn for. The way of Christ leads to life, life in all its fullness as Jesus promised.
May God be with us as we live lives as we truly are – Jesus’ people.
