One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
Pastor Mathew Magera – 1/10/16 – Sermon 138
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
On Friday night, my family
and I attended the Lakeview Varsity basketball game. It was the first time I've
been to a high school basketball game since I, myself, was in high school. It
was quite entertaining. Both teams did well, the crowd was into it. There was a
little bit of blood that was shed, but overall, it was a good time. As I
watched, I noticed something. Each time the whistle blew to call a foul or
violation, I remembered that these youth, while very talented, are still in
many ways learning the game. They make mistakes from time to time.
Like all sports, basketball
has a set of rules. If rules are broken, there are consequences. I was reading
an article this week from about 12 years ago that talked about penalties in a
football game. For high school football games, the study showed that the team
with the most penalties against them ended up winning the game 67% of the time.
The team with the most penalties won over a majority of the time.[1]
It was difficult for me to believe it until I was at that basketball game this
week and thought about fouls and penalties in sports. Basketball is obviously
different than football but, interestingly, fouls and penalties are designed to
provide discipline to the team that commits them. However, with basketball in
particular, there are times when you want to intentionally foul the other team
in order to actually gain an advantage.
Think about it and play this
one out with me. Team A has the ball and they are leading by one point and
there is 20 seconds left on the clock. There is a good chance in order to win
they will hold on to the ball and run out the clock. The only chance for Team B
to win is if they break the rules, or foul the other team. At this point, the
clock stops and Team A has to take free throws. If they make both their shots,
Team B now has gained an opportunity to make a three point shot and tie the
game. If Team A only makes one of their shots, Team B now has an opportunity to
win the game. If Team A misses both shots, Team B has an even bigger opportunity
to win the game. They break the rules, they foul, to gain an advantage.
Now, hold onto that thought
and travel back with me to Romans 6. Paul has just made a bold statement in the
previous chapter saying that because sin increased, grace increased all the
more. Now, at the start of this chapter, he forms a question that is probably
being asked of him. Paul, if you say grace increases with more sin, should we
not then continue to sin so that we might experience more and more grace? This
is a great question. If the answer was yes, it would make life so much easier.
We would sin, ask for forgiveness, receive the grace, feel good, and then do it
again. If we want to feel good, all we have to do is commit a sin and ask for
forgiveness and there it is. Whew. I love me some forgiveness, I gotta get me
some forgiveness!
But, of course, Paul says,
"by no means." Actually, if we were to take that in context it would
be as if Paul was saying "Heck no!" and that's the PG version. Of
course we should not sin so that grace would increase. It doesn't work like
that. The people wanted to know if there could ever be an advantage to sinning,
much like fouling in basketball. Is there a loophole where I can get some extra
grace if I commit some extra sins? Paul says, absolutely not!
Don't try to find any
loopholes in God, you're not going to find one. God is God, one Lord. The one
true Lord. We cannot sin so that grace might increase. Given our human nature,
our first response might be to say, "Why not?" I mean, we're Lutheran,
right? A big foundation of us being Lutheran is that we are saved by grace
through faith. If we have faith in God's forgiveness, couldn't it be that we
would continue to have faith even in sin so that we could still be saved by
grace? Let's find out. Why should we not keep on sinning so that grace might
increase?
Paul doesn't really go into
answering that question by talking about being saved by grace through faith so
we might think his audience would have understood the concept. But, he does
answer the question by simply saying "we can't!" Why should be not
keep on sinning so that grace might increase? Because it's impossible. We
simply can't do it. Paul says in verse two, "We are those who have died to
sin; how can we live in it any longer?" This is a rhetorical question. The
answer is assumed "We can't!" If you're dead, how can you be alive?
You're either one or the other, but not both. It's like if I ask Skye,
"how are you going to keep your room clean if you put your clothes on the
floor" The answer is obviously implied, but it is still asked as a
question. We've died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? We can't. Dead
people don't sin. And like the little child we again might ask, "Why
not?"
Paul says, "Don’t you
know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death?" What he's saying here is that, if you are baptized, your old self
is gone. The sinner within you is dead. Lifeless, motionless, dead. Gone! Paul
continues, "We were therefore buried with him through baptism into
death." We are dead. Baptism is a spiritual drowning of our old sinful
self. Our old sinful self dies. So, if Paul says we can't sin so that grace
might increase, you might ask why not? When Paul says because it is impossible,
you might again ask why not? He then asks, do you not understand the meaning of
your baptism?
This is exactly where the
good news comes from. We're dead to sin, yes, but that's not all. Paul
continues in verse four, "Just as Christ was raised from the dead through
the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." On the one side of
Baptism, there is death. On the other, new life. If we have been united with
him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a
resurrection like his. We may be dead to sin but we are alive in Christ.
Now, Paul has just spoken to
us the greatest news we could hear and you might think he could just stop right
there. Still, Paul's words don't really mean much to us because if we look
around, we still see ourselves falling victim to sin, do we not? The good news
is proclaimed here each Sunday but yet we still walk out those doors into the
same sinful habits we have fallen into our entire lives. How can Paul say we
are dead to sin yet we still do it? How can Paul say that in our Baptism our
sinful self was put to death if just we keep sinning? Because it's not
automatic. Paul isn't saying, "You died to sin so you automatically don't
sin." What Paul wants us to hear instead are words of encouragement.
Paul tells us, Christ died
for you. In your Baptism you died to sin. So, consider yourselves dead. In your
Baptism you are alive in Christ. So, consider yourselves alive to God. You
are... so now become what you are. We are dead to sin. We need to start acting
dead! We are alive in Christ. We need to start acting alive! When Martin Luther
started feeling discouraged, there were times he splashed water on himself and
said, "But I'm baptized!" We can do this every morning when we wake
up. Remember your baptism. Remember that you died to sin and were made alive in
Christ and live your day just like that. You are... so now become what you are!
So, the next time you find
yourself at or watching a basketball game and see fouls and violations,
remember your Baptism. When you see someone intentionally foul another player
in order to gain an advantage, think about what Paul says about increasing
grace. Anyway, life isn't a basketball game. We will not receive an increase of
grace if we keep on breaking the rules. There is no advantage to be gained by
sinning more. It is impossible. Because we are dead to sin. But, we are alive
in Christ. Just because we keep on sinning anyway doesn't mean our Baptism
didn't work or that we need to be baptized again. We just need to live into
that Baptism each day. We are baptized, so let's live that way. In just a
little bit we are going to remember our Baptisms and get a chance to be
sprinkled with the cleansing water that made us alive together in Christ. In
fact, during Communion, if you want to dip your hands in the water you can do
that too. There is not limit on the number of times we can remember our
Baptisms. The more we remember it, the more we can become what we have been
made by the grace of God in Christ Jesus. Dead to sin and alive in Christ. To God
be the glory, now and always. Amen.