Session 16 – Romans; Romans 6: Mark Lanier, 09/21/25

Romans 6: Grace, Sin, and the New Life - Mark Lanier
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Bernard: [00:00:00] Well, I'm delighted to get to teach from Romans again this morning. I wanna start by talking to you about a fellow named WH Auden. Um, he was, uh, born in February 21st. 1907 in York, England. That's up in the northern part of England. His dad was a doctor. His mother, reared the children. both of his parents by the way, were uh.

Vks, um, that's Vicar kids instead of PK pastor kids. Um, uh, he, so he was brought into a family. His father wasn't that religious, but his mother took him to church all the time. They were Church of England, uh, high Church of England. And, [00:01:00] and he was, um. Uh, schooled in that from the very earliest of ages with his mom.

He grew up fascinated by, uh, the mines that were nearby. Uh, it, it made a real impression on him. He thought at first, about being an engineer, uh, as many children did in that day and age in England, he was sent off to boarding school. The second boarding school he went to was Gresham's. Now, Gresham's was started in the fifth.

15 hundreds, the mid 15 hundreds, it had been a boarding school for a long time. Send the kids off. It's supposedly an Anglican boarding school that's gonna teach 'em Church of England stuff. But candidly, the teaching from a religious basis was, uh, really poor by all accounts while. Uh, uh, Alden was there.

Maybe it's different today. Uh, maybe it was different before. I don't know because I've never been to Gresham's, but by all accounts, when Alden was there, it wasn't, in fact [00:02:00] it was there that he pinned those words that the religion as taught there was as flat as an old bottle of soda water. And he would go to church and religious things and he started noticing that.

It seemed to him the only devotional people at these churches were the people who were outcasts from society. And he made a determination that people only love God when no one else will love them. And he became quite the cynic. He started arguing with a few of his other classmates about whether or not there really is a personal God.

And then off he goes to Oxford University where he enrolls in Christ Church College at Oxford University. Now, Christ Church College, by the way, has the dining hall that we modeled ours after that you'll get to see today if you come to the picnic and you stay for the 2 32. But that [00:03:00] aside, while he was at Oxford, he became a professing non-believer, at least in a personal God.

And he was, uh, outspoken about this. He was here in the early 1930s. What you would term if you were looking at this, philosophically, a classic liberal. He believed that people were naturally good, and that through the process of our human evolution, we were becoming better. And better and better, and it was just a matter of time until everything was hunky dory.

As such, he bought into the post Freudian psychology. Now, Freud didn't die, I think till the mid thirties, but he bought into the, so Freud's not as active, but the Post Freud people who still ascribed to Freud's ideas. [00:04:00] The post Freudian philosophy at the time in psychology was that, yeah, you got people with problems, but those problems are because of things that have happened to 'em in their life.

And all you gotta do is get 'em some therapy. You gotta deal with those distortions they've had in their life and you can return them to a healthy state. So it's that classic Liberal people are good, some people are struggling because of something that's happened. Let's get them fixed, send them on their merry way, and they'll be fine and dandy.

He was also a Marxist. And a Marxist is someone who, in essence, at that point in time, by the way, that label is so misused by so many different people. It's not even funny. But within the true framework of Marxism, at that point in time, the idea was that human evil people are naturally good, but human evil comes about because of economic oppression.

And if [00:05:00] you can just solve people's economic problems, they will be restored and they won't be so intent on evil. And certainly you can see people who steal because they don't have enough food. And if you took care of the problem of them getting enough food, they wouldn't need to steal. And so there's some elements that made this seem quite logical to.

Folks, and he was one of the folks who embraced Marxism. He was also what would be called in his era, a liberal socialistic Democrat. And the idea behind the liberal socialistic democratic outlook at the time was, all you need to do is educate people. If you can give people a good education, they'll make the right choices.

People choose evil. They choose malevolent, uh, acts. They, they, they, they are bad people because they're not properly educated. So let's give them the education and everything will be hunky dory. [00:06:00] So now think about this for just a moment. He's gotta ask himself this question. Are people naturally good? He would say at the time, yes.

If people are messed up, can therapy fix it and restore their goodness? Yes. Without economic oppression, are people going to be good? Yes. If people are educated, will they be good? Yes. And he believed this in the 1930s until that decade started moving toward the end. And then events in Europe occurred that basically destroyed classic liberalism as I'm defining it, this idea that people are naturally good and therapy will restore goodness, and economic oppression [00:07:00] is the problem went out the window with Hitler and the Third Reich.

People aren't naturally good.

I mean, the founding fathers of our country were well aware. They were pre classical liberalism. They were well aware. One reason America has a balance of powers instead of a king is because people are not naturally good. And so you need a balance of power if we want to have a sustainable republic. Now what happens to den?

He leaves England and he comes over to New York City in 1939 and he meets a number of different people among them, he met a Neo Orthodox theologian named Reinhold neighbor and Reinhold neighbor, and his wife became [00:08:00] very close friends with Aden. Now. Reinhold er, I don't agree with all of his theology, but, but Reinhold er turns Auden onto a number of different people and Auden starts spending a lot of time reading.

And so he's reading Paul Tillek, he's reading Sorn Kike Guard. He's reading a number of different people who have a different view than the classic liberal view neighbor, for example, strongly held to the doctrine of original sin. And in the process of coming and reading these people and understanding this and trying to grapple with the reality of classic liberalism falling flat on its face, Aden comes back to his faith.

Our people, naturally good Will therapy restore goodness. [00:09:00] Is Marxism on target? No. Instead he determines that sinners are helpless to do what is right. What Luther calls the bondage of the will. He is determined to understand that sinners are under universal judgment and wholly dependent on God's mercy.

And then he writes. A Christmas oratorio, a brief, uh, uh, opera. Okay. A Christmas oratorio. He doesn't write the music. In fact, doesn't get set to music finally until like the 1950s. And the music's not all that great. Or I'd played some of it, but, but it's really kind of profound. So I brought a copy of the book because I wanna show you something.

The book, uh, that, that the copy that I have is, is this one. It's. Published in a lot of different era, uh, different people. But this has got a good introduction. [00:10:00] This is the Princeton publication, and I wanna show you the cover of his oration. His oratorio, I mean, excuse me, for the time being a Christmas orator.

It was de dedicated in memory of his mother who passed away the year. He really pushed this forward in 1941 year he completed it. And look what he says at the bottom of the opening page. What shall we say then, shall we continue in sin that Grace May abound? God forbid. And he notes it as Romans six, and it is Romans six, the passage that we're gonna be looking at today.

Now I'll tell you that he is, um, an interesting fellow. In this oratorio. [00:11:00] He, it, it, it's a, it's a really good read Look, this guy was a serious writer. He's one of the outstanding poets. He taught poetry at the University of Michigan. He's one of the outstanding poets of the 20th century, especially the mid 20th century.

Um, uh, he and ts Elliott were tight. TS Elliott would publish his stuff. He'd make fun of TS Elliott, but he kind of respected him. I mean, they, they, they were the poets of that era. And his writing is, is, um, challenging. But it's really, really good. And so when he's writing, um, his Christmas oratorio, he's got the different segments and you get to the segment where he's talking about Herod and Herod's decision to slaughter all of the innocent children to try to ae, eliminate any Christ child that may be coming in.

And in the process of it. [00:12:00] Herod gives this long speech, and, uh, uh, it's a, it's a great speech. And in the speech, Herod says, look, I've really got no choice. I mean, let's say this Christ child is not the Messiah. People will think he is. It's just gonna lead to trouble. I've gotta do this for the good of the Kingdom.

Why does everything happen to me? And then what if he is the Messiah? Well, that's gonna be even worse because if he's the Messiah and he's gonna die for people's sins, I mean, do you realize how rampant crime is gonna be? Look, he says, if this is for real, every crook is going to say, every crook will argue.

This is Herod. I like committing crimes. God likes forgiving them. Really, the world is admirably arranged. [00:13:00] If Jesus is gonna really be God and he's gonna die for sins, God likes to forgive sins that much. Well, I love to commit sins. This is a win-win. I get to do what I want. God gets to do what he wants, and it's this twisted thinking.

Of Herod that so aptly demonstrates the passage that he quotes from Paul. And so I want it in our minds as we look at class today, and I wanna talk about it in terms of kind of a pendulum swing because there are two extreme views that have come out of history about God and grace and forgiveness. And those two extreme views are both dangerous and unbiblical, and the truth lies in the middle.

So one extreme view is what is called theologically legalism. The idea [00:14:00] being that you can live by the letter of the law, you can merit your way into God's grace. You can do it. You, you know, get your Nikes on and just do it. You're that good. And that's an extreme. The other extreme of the pendulum is what is typically called antinomianism, antinomianism anti means, uh, against nomism.

It comes from the Greek word nomos for law. And this is the idea of, hey. Do whatever you want. It really doesn't matter. This was Herod in the Christmas oratorio. I like to sin. God likes to forgive sins. It's a win-win deal. And that idea that what we do makes no difference because all of our sins have been forgiven.[00:15:00]

We can live any way we want, is just as unbiblical. On the other extreme as legalism is on the first extreme because the truth of the matter lies somewhere between those two in a sense. So those are the three things I want to talk to you about this morning, and we're gonna divide it up this way. We're gonna talk about legalism by using Romans six, one.

And then we're going to talk about antinomianism using Romans six, two, and then we're gonna find that balance using Romans six, three, and four. So let's do it that way. We'll start with the legalism. Now we need to warm up here. So here's Romans six, one. What shall we say then, are we to continue in sin so that Grace May abound?

Now, if you were listening to Paul's letter being read to the church, if [00:16:00] you were in the church in Rome, you would not be hearing someone say, what shall we say then? Because in the Greek, the word order is slightly different. It begins with these two words, tun. Now, t. What, in a sense, un then or therefore, or something like that.

When you put those two words together, you've got a construction that Paul uses a lot. Those two words are the first thing that the Romans would've heard, tun, and, oh, we know what Paul's doing here. Paul is about to anticipate. Some objection we might have to what he's saying or he's about to anticipate a misunderstanding.

[00:17:00] Some people might have, they would know that that's what it means. So before you even get to the next word of, uh, which is the future tense of what of, of, say, speak, what shall we say? What, what are we gonna say about this? Before you get to that, you've already got Paul. Getting into their mind space with, okay, here's a misunderstanding.

Paul's gotta clear up, and Paul does this a lot. I just grabbed out of Romans where he is done it. He already did it in Romans three, one, he said, tun. So the, the, what's the advantage to being a Jew? Because he's just shown that all of the Jews are going to hell by God's principle of judgment. If they think they're getting to God's graces by their actions, the law's not gonna get 'em there.

Nobody's good. Nobody does a good deed, and by God's principles of judgment, it's all going bad. [00:18:00] So he says, now some of you're gonna say, well, then, hey, there's no advantage to being a Jew. And he knows that that's a misunderstanding because the Jews, he says, had the Oracles of God. They, they have, uh, uh, the words of God.

I mean, there's tons of advantages to being a Jew. It's just not, oh, we're good enough and we're chosen to where we can merit things because we have the law. And so what Paul does is he says, you know, Hey, une, you know, lemme clarify. Lemme get a misunderstanding out of the way here that some of you may have.

He uses it again in Romans three, nine. What then une, are we Jews any better off as he brings that argument to a conclusion? He uses it where we just saw in Romans six one, but he'll use it again in Romans six 15. What then what then are we to sin? Because we're not under law, but under grace by no means.

You [00:19:00] know, don't misunderstand me. He's saying, don't misunderstand me. Romans seven, seven. He'll use it again. Une. What are we gonna say about this is the law Sin? Heavens no. Megan or to Heavens? No. He'll use it in Romans nine 14 UNE every time. What shall we say is, is God unjust? Every time he's got an ability to ask a rhetorical or a didactic a teaching question, he does.

So with this opening that grabs their attention. And so we go back to the passage, tun and, and the best, the translators, I'm using the ESV here. What they do is they take the what then here, and they just kind of divide it up. What then? So [00:20:00] what shall we say then is their effort to try to get at it, but it doesn't really catch the full punch.

And I don't know how we catch the full punch other than just talk about it and, and explore the Greek together. But tun in my mind in a linear translation, if, if we're gonna do the, how about those Texas Tech Red Raiders, man? Did you, if we're gonna do the Lubbock translation of Romans. Une. This is what Paul means when they hear those words.

When they hear those words. It's like Paul saying, I know what you're thinking and you're missing the point. That's where he starts this out. I know what you're thinking and you're missing the point. Let me show you. So une, what are we saying about this? I know what you're thinking and you're missing the point.

What then? Well now anytime then we're looking at this passage. If [00:21:00] we wanna know what Paul means by I know what you're thinking and you're missing the point, we've gotta go back to see what Paul has been saying that's caused them to misunderstand. And so we go back to Romans five and verse 20 is a good illustration that kind of encapsulates the argument of where he's been.

But Paul has been saying the law is not adequate to to get you to God. You can work your fingers to the bone, but in a celestial sense, all you're gonna get are bony fingers. You're not gonna get to God. The law's not good enough to get you to God, and you are not good enough following it to get you to God.

So the law came in not to give you an avenue to God. The law came in to [00:22:00] show you your sin, to show you how sin should be handled to give you guardrails for life to try to live this life most proficiently. And the best way you can. There are lots of functions for the law. If there is a pedagogy to lead you to Christ, but it was never there with the intent that you're gonna work your way to God's pleasure.

And I'm reminded of, of Christ and the rich young ruler. The story in Matthew 19, by the way, uh, the Riverside Church in New York, John Rockefeller bought this painting and put it in the Riverside Church. It's a Heinrich Kaufman painting from the late 19th century, and he did three of them that Rockefeller bought and put in that church.

If you ever have a chance to go by and look at 'em, they're pretty cool. But the rich young ruler wants to know from Christ what it's gonna take for him to be. Saved for him to be [00:23:00] righteous, for him to be good. And Jesus says, well, you know the law, just go do that. And the rich young ruler says What I already have, you know, I mean, he Barney fifes it.

Yeah. And I am, that is the law. I'm pretty much perfect in that one. What else you got? And Jesus says, oh, you did the law. Good. 'cause I was thinking about that commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. So why don't you go sell everything you've got and give it to your neighbor? And the rich young ruler, if you read it carefully in the Greek, you'll see, he goes, because he's got nothing to say.

He, he, he, he goes away, discouraged. He should have fallen on his knees and said, I'm not good enough. What can I do to be saved? I clearly can't [00:24:00] save me. I pray thee hosanna in Aramaic. Save. I pray thee the law was never meant as a means to earn one's way into God's grace. So if that's the case and Legalism doesn't do it, is the solution then to swing the pendulum all the way across the scale, say, well then clearly it doesn't matter how I live.

I can do anything I want. What shall we say? Then Paul says, are we to continuing sin that Grace May abound and remember? Earth, please remember, and you go back and listen to earlier lectures. Grace in the way Paul uses it within the confines of this type of conversation is his reflection on the cross of Christ, [00:25:00] the death of Christ on our behalf.

That is the grace. That is the gift. That is the favor God did for us that we didn't deserve. He died for us on Calvary. That's the grace by which we are saved.

So when Paul says, you know, in order that the grace, the gift, not God's graciousness, this is not an adjective describing God. This is a noun. A singular noun, the gift, the grace, the favor, what Christ did on the cross. Do we want it just to overflow and gush and have so much more significance because we've got so many more sins.

He was able to carry what broad shoulders Jesus had on the cross. He could handle all of those sins. I'll give him some more and just show you how great he was. [00:26:00] Paul says, should we do that so that. Grace May abound. And then he says, by no means may gen toto. Um, it's another favorite expressions of Paul's.

It just means, uh, it's translated by no means may it never be. Heaven's no. Uh, the cotton patch version of the Bible uses a pejorative, I won't use to translate it into Georgian farmer dialect. Um, but instead of heaven, no, he says. Something different. No, um, it, it is, it is a very punchy, strong, no, absolutely not.

No way.

He says, how can we who died to sin still live in it? The grace, the cross of Christ is not a license to [00:27:00] sin. He says, how can we who died to sin still live in it? What he's doing there is he's using, uh, what Douglas Moo calls, um, realm transfer terminology, and I like that. Uh, Becky and I last week had to run over to the UK for, uh, a couple of days of business, and when we did, we go into UK Border Patrol and when we go through UK Border Patrol, um.

We're in a different country. We're not in America anymore, Toto. We're not in Kansas. This is a different land. So when I'm pulling into that roundabout near Woodstock and that lady in front of me, really nice lady Margaret, if you're watching, sorry. Put her brakes on while I'm looking over there and I just nudged her bumper.

Enough to do a lot of [00:28:00] damage. Um,

I've gotta deal with UK laws. I'm, I'm not in America. I can't deal with American law. I can't say, well, you know, I actually know something about the law. And, uh, lemme tell you how, how we do this stuff now because my American law doesn't make diddly squat difference when I'm over there. Yes,

Paul's using language of realm transfer. You have left one place and gone to another. You used to live. Remember in chapter five, Paul is personified sin. And death and sin like a person enters into the world, um, through Adam's sin and death comes in through sin. And so he's been personifying it, but we were under the thumb of sin, but not anymore in [00:29:00] Christ.

We are gone from that. If we were to draw it out, it would look like this. Um, you were.

In a world of sin, and you were under the dominion of sin, and sin was your king, and sin was your Lord, and sin had you by the throat and with sin death, but in Christ, you died to sin and you ain't there anymore. You're now over here in the world of, of Christ, a resurrected Christ, a world of eternity, and you are now over here in a new life.

And so he's saying, if you're over here in this new world, why on earth would you think you still live in [00:30:00] that old world, in that old kingdom? How do you live in a place when you died There?

He says, should we continue to sin so that grace can just overflow? Well, no. How can we who died to sin still live in it? And he uses this word ho hoist is um. A little more emphatic than he he would normally use, but it, it's got a characterization. It gives you, uh, an idea of a quality. Um, it's not just that which is there, it, it's how can we who have the quality of people who have died to sin?

We've actually done this. This is who we are. This is, this is the real life stuff we really [00:31:00] have. This is not, oh, that's a very nice little metaphor. No, this is the real deal. If you've died to sin and that world of sin, why on earth would you think that that's where you're gonna thrive and where you wanna live?

You know, we, we are the ones who died to sin. Now this word died here.

This, this is very much a, an act. This is a moment. This is a time, this is something that happened.

This is a decision that was made. Faith is a decision. Faith is something that that, that you choose to follow Christ. Now you might say, well, yeah, but, uh, I'm, I'm a five point Calvinist, and, uh, I am, I don't [00:32:00] care. You still are making the choice. Even if you think God's forcing you to do it, Paul is saying that you have, you have made a deliberate choice.

You have made a choice to live somewhere and to be someone that does not live under the realm of sin anymore. So don't think that you're gonna earn your way, but also don't think that your lifestyle doesn't matter anymore because the truth of the matter is going to be found in what Paul continues to say.

Let's start back at Romans six one and let's keep the flow going. So what shall we say then, are we to continue in sin so that the cross of Christ has even more value than we thought? Heavens know. How can we who died to sin still live in it? [00:33:00] Do you not know? eNote? This is great. So, um, there's a language, abbreviated pie, PIE.

Anybody know what pie is as a language? I told somebody that I was fluent in pie. They said, that's not really possible, is it? And I said, oh yeah, apple Chocolate Coconut.

That only works if you're dealing with a bunch of linguists. But PIE stands for Proto

Endo European. And the idea is that somewhere in. Prerecorded history. There was a language that was spoken in the general region we would call Europe, and that language birthed a number of different languages as far [00:34:00] south as Persia, Sanskrit. Um, it birthed, uh, uh, uh, Latin. It birthed Greek. It birthed the German tongues.

And, and so there are certain words that we can tell had a root back in proto, um, endo, European. And one of them are words that are built off of either A-K-N-E-H or a g in EH. And we still have remnants of that today in our word, KNOW. No. And the Greeks did it with au and the Latins did it with au. Now what we have here is, uh, oh, go back.

By the way, in Latin if in in Greek, if you, if it's a [00:35:00] no or a not, you put a in front of it or a N in Latin, you put I or IN. So. This in Latin would say, are you ignorant? It'd be ignorant instead of, uh, the Greek. Are you unknowing? Don't you know Paul's truly saying in American speak, are you ignorant to this, that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death 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. If you hear Pastor Jar baptize, um, he will often say, buried with Christ in baptism, raised to walk in a new life. [00:36:00] This is where he gets it from.

By the way, next Sunday, anybody wants to be baptized, we're gonna like do 'em up here. And, uh, uh, if you're in my class and you wanna be baptized and, and you don't mind me doing it, just tell Brent, tell me. And, uh, we'll get wet next week and, uh, get it done. But that's just side note. I asked Pastor Jared about that.

He said, sure, sure. Tell him. And he said, or they can do it at the 11 o'clock and you can come do it then too. I think it'd be kind of cool to do it up in this one anyway, that's what he says. But this is an interesting passage to try to read and understand. Starts out with verse three. Don't you know that all of us who have been baptized now, he's taken, Paul's, taken the Greek verb baptizo and turned it into kind of a, a noun of sorts, uh, functions that way the, the.

Baptizo [00:37:00] means to immerse, uh, can be used to pour, uh, but most ordinarily it's, it's immersed. Don't you know that all of us who have been immersed are baptized into Christ? Now, this is a really thorny thing. You were baptized, this is a Greek word, ace. Ace is the place with your helpful Greek word. You were baptized, ACE Christ, Jesus, and then you see it again.

Ace. The death of him. His death. Okay, so you were baptized into Christ Jesus. You were baptized into his death. Ha, that word ace is a preposition. That is, um, for [00:38:00] some, a problem for others, an adventure. You can think of it like the English word n Now, sometimes we translate it for, in Acts 2 38, Peter says, repent me baptized for the forgiveness of your sins.

He uses the same word, ace. Um, there, you, you, Moses and Corinthians, they, the Israelites were baptized into Moses. He uses the word ace when they went through the Red Sea. The, so ace is a troublesome word, but if you think of it like the English word in the English preposition in it might help you a little bit.

Now, if you go to sleep during this part, that is absolutely okay. I will tell you that we've only got about. 12, 13 more minutes of class. So if you can hang in there through this, you get an extra fajita if you're coming to lunch. But take just the English word in. [00:39:00] We can use that English word in to talk about a location.

Um, you know, somebody, uh, uh, where is, where are my car keys? They're in the box. See in is a location where in the box. Where are they? They're in the box. That's the location. But in doesn't have to mean location. In can also mean purpose. Why you're doing something. I come in peace. See, I'm not coming inside the word peace.

It's not a location there, it's a purpose. I come for the purpose of peace. Or you could say. Hey, I've written this in pen or pencil and it can refer to the method by which you've done something. I've done it. Uh, I wrote it in pencil or sign your name in blood. [00:40:00] You can also use the word in to talk about time.

I'll be there in an hour. I'll be there in 10 minutes. I'll be there in three days. I ain't coming in can mean time. You can use the word in to describe a condition or state. I'm in love with my sweet wife, Becky, in, it's a condition, it's a state. Okay. I gotta like rearrange these. Sorry. You can also use N for incorporation.

If you're making brownies, you might. Mix in some eggs, or maybe someone will say, I'm in the army, or I'm in a bridge club. In can mean incorporation. See all of these different ways the word in can be used. They're all true with the Greek word ace. [00:41:00] So now you've got this Greek word, eighth. We were baptized.

Ace Cton. Yes. Soon. What does it mean to be baptized into Christ? Is it a location? Is it a time? Is it a manner? A means a condition. I would suggest the way Paul's writing here, and by the way, the only way you can tell is context. Context and overall theology is how you make these determinations. There's not like a secret decoder ring that's gonna tell you how it's being used that time.

I would suggest to you that what Paul's doing here is using it as an incorporation. In other words, like you're in the army, you were baptized into Christ. You have been co, you have incorporated into Christ. You are in Christ. You are incorporated within Christ. And when you were [00:42:00] incorporated into Christ, you were incorporated into his death.

Whoops. Stay there for a moment. You were incorporated into his death, so the death of Christ finds you. Paul says it this way in Galatians, I have been crucified with Christ. He was incorporated into the death of Christ. He was incorporated that means into his death. So hey, we are not living in that old realm of sin anymore.

We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism and death and just as Christ was then raised from the dead we're incorporated. We too were raised.[00:43:00]

Tuan was, uh, one of my favorite, um, church fathers. He's a Latin church father from North Africa, Carthage. And one of the reasons I love him. It's 'cause he was a lawyer who just happened to sort of turn to theology as a hobby. I thought that's a pretty cool guy. He wrote a lot on baptism and I don't really agree with a lot of what he's had to say.

Um, but some of what he said was later incorporated in, in the, he's, he's writing, he was born in the end of the 100, so he's writing probably about 2 10, 2 20. Um, on baptism and then about 150 years later, his writings kind of spur on what is called the apostolic constitutions. And here's what they say about this.

That immersion is dying with Jesus. Immersion. Immersion coming out of the water is rising with him. [00:44:00] Immersion, you're buried with Christ in baptism. Immersion raised to walk in a new life. And that's one of the earliest accounts of using this passage, uh, for baptism. In that sense, with that, that terminology and that idea, and I don't know that that's all that Paul means there, but it's certainly inherent within what Paul is saying.

But this idea of us being incorporated with him is dead on, and it's why it's so appropriate to say at a baptism we were buried with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life. Now, walk is a great word, peripateo in the Greek.

Patto just means to walk. Perry means round. So pair patto in classical Greek is just, Hey, I'm, what are you doing? [00:45:00] I'm pair of patto in who's walking around? This is for the camera people to keep them working. Swivel, swivel, walking around. But Paul, uniquely in the New Testament, takes that word and uses it, um, uh, very akin to the Hebrew word halak.

Uh, we have actual Hebrew people here who can tell you this better than I, but uh, the Hebrew word halak,

um, is, uh, means it means to walk, but it also can refer to a lifestyle, and that's what Paul's doing when Paul uses this word. He's talking about just the way you live, not simply. And we, we use the word kind of like that when we talk about, you know, how's your walk with God? We're not saying, is it paced at three minute miles per hour?

Or, you know, when we say, how's your walk with God? We're talking about your [00:46:00] lifestyle, and that's what Paul's doing here. We might walk in a newness of life. There are a host of scriptures that Paul uses that. Work with these and I want to take just a moment and you can look these up. If you're at home watching this on the internet, you can take your time and pause and look at 'em.

But while we've got just a moment, I wanna show you just a couple of them. The first one I've already referenced, but look at it together with me. Galatians two 20. This is the same Paul, he's already written this. Romans is being written after Galatians. I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but it's Christ who lives in me.

This is a mutual incorporation. Christ lives in me, the life I live in, the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who loved [00:47:00] me and gave himself for me. And then look at the next sentence. I do not nullify the grace of God. For if righteousness were through the law, Christ died for no purpose. Now, remember I told you that when Paul uses this word grace, he's thinking the cross of Christ on our behalf.

One of the things we've really got to work against because it, it's so natural to speak of God as a gracious God and, and a grace as an attribute, and, and carice can mean that, but, but we tend to think of it that way and we lose sight of the punch that Paul has, that the gift, the favor, the unmerited favor that you don't deserve, the true grace of God is dying for you.

That's the gift, and these are the passages that really illustrate that profoundly. I don't nullify the cross of Christ [00:48:00] on my behalf. The grace of God. If I could get there on my own, then he didn't need to die. There's no need for grace, the gift of Christ on the cross. If he, if I could get there on my own, he died in vain.

Look at second Timothy two 11.

Two Timothy two 11. Paul says, the saying is trustworthy for if we have died with him. We will also live with him. It's realm transfer. This is who we are. And it continues. Uh, Colossians two 12. Another great passage. All, I mean, this is just Paul. He says this over and over. Colossians two 12. He says, we have been [00:49:00] buried with him in baptism, in which we were also raised with him through faith.

In the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead. If you go to one Corinthians 15, four where Paul is defining the gospel, he says, brethren, I'll remind you of the terms I used when I delivered the good news to you. Namely Christ died, was buried, and on the third day, rose again, the resurrection and the new life to which we're coming.

That's part of the gospel. It's not just that Jesus died for our sins. He was resurrected to a new life. We're not just dead to sin. We are given a new life. And so you can look at the liberals like Alden in his earlier days, and they're gone now. Um, and we, we use liberal to mean something totally different in American politics now, but the, the classic liberal who believed in the natural goodness of [00:50:00] people, Uhuh.

The pro Freudian psychology, the human problems or distortions ha. Human evil is economically based. Ha. I'm not saying that there aren't elements of truth to some of this. I mean, heaven knows people can use therapy to help. Heaven knows economic oppression can lead to evil. Heaven knows that education is a good thing, but all of those good things do not in any way.

Mean that we are okay on our own because we're not, we need not just no legalism, no antinomianism. We need the truth that we have a new life in Christ. And if that is true, don't you know that the deceiver in this world will try to keep you from understanding it and living in it. Yes, and that's why I hope you'll be back next week because we're gonna continue with [00:51:00] Paul to understand what it's like to live in this.

But for now, here are your points for home. The law could never defeat sin. The law just magnified it, showed it for what it is. It might seem absurd that by grace sin is defeated, but if you understand that grace is the cross of Christ. Then it makes perfect sense because in Christ crucified, we have sin defeated.

In a resurrected Jesus, we have a newness of life that is eternal life. So we don't live to sin. We instead take sin seriously. It took the death of Jesus to deal with it. Sin was never gonna be dealt with by psychotherapy or education [00:52:00] or money. Sin needed the death of Christ to get us out from under the thumb and dominion of sin and death.

So that's what we need to do is find. And live this new life, walk in the newness of life. We might be able to do that if we choose. And by God's spirit, we are empowered. And by God's wisdom we are led. And by God's fellowship we are encouraged by God's word. We studiously learn. There's a lot that we do to walk in this, but boy.

As Pastor Jarret said this morning, saddle up your horses because this is the great adventure. This is what life really is. This is the truth that Paul's put out in these verses in Romans. So let me bless you in the name of Jesus, and then we will, uh, uh, look forward to next week as we continue this Father in the name of [00:53:00] Jesus, father by name, I, I mean the, the whole resume, all that he's done.

His love, his death, his resurrection, his atonement, the new life. Through all of this work of Jesus, we come before you as your children thanking you and praying for your wisdom, your guidance, your strength, your empowerment, your blessing, so that we might. Show the world your character and your love as on display at Calvary in the empty tomb.

Amen.