The internet is a powerful tool, but of course, one must be careful when surfing the web. Do a search on google – especially an image search – and you might run into all kinds of objectionable and dangerous stuff, stuff you might not have been looking for, stuff that you really didn’t want to see. It can be quite dangerous, surfing the internet.
The other day I did a google search using the phrase “Romans 6,” part of which was just read for us. You would not believe what came up. Fully half of the images that came up focused on a phrase that appears near the end of the chapter, not even a full verse, just six words long: “the wages of sin is death.” And there were pictures of flames and bodies, bodies being consumed by flames, and captions of death and damnation.
Dangerous stuff, indeed.
Well, I followed a few of those links to their webpages. It is sometimes hard to avert one’s gaze from objectionable content. And I read all about sinful humanity, and how death and damnation are what await, but that Jesus Christ took our place by dying so that we don’t have to.
Jesus saved us by taking our place; by suffering the punishment that we deserve.
This is what the theologians call substitutionary atonement. Jesus was our substitute. He died in our place.
Substitutionary atonement is all over the internet. A search for “Romans 6” will yield many examples of substitutionary atonement. However, substitutionary atonement is neither mentioned nor described in Romans 6. In fact, substitutionary atonement isn’t mentioned or described anywhere in the New Testament. The idea first appeared over 1,000 years later, in the writings of an archbishop named Anselm.
Substitutionary atonement – the idea that Christ died in our place, that Christ died, so that we don’t have to die – is a very different idea from what appears in Romans 6.
In Romans 6, it says that all of us were baptized into Christ’s death, that we have been buried with him by baptism into death, that we have, in fact, died with Christ.
According to this, Christ didn’t die in our place. According to this, we have been united with Christ in death; we have been crucified with Christ.
Paul says the same thing in the book of Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ.” He doesn’t say “Christ was crucified instead of me.” He says “I have been crucified with Christ.”
This is what theologians call “participatory atonement.” It means that Jesus doesn’t save us from the death he suffered; instead, it means that we are brought in to participate with Christ in Christ’s death. We are crucified with Christ.
Back in Romans, Paul mentions that this dying happens by baptism. “We have been buried with him by baptism into death.” Because of our baptism, we are crucified with Christ.
I can understand why people prefer to think that Christ died in their place, so that they don’t have to. It’s not exactly a great way to get people to join the church, to say, “come, get baptized … into death!”
So let’s talk about that a little.
Do you remember your own baptism? Martin Luther said it was important to remember one’s baptism, which is kind of strange since he himself was baptized as an infant; so whether or not you remember your baptism, it’s important to “remember” your baptism.
Two weeks ago, we had seven young people get baptized here at BKCC. If you were here and you saw that, maybe that helped you remember. What was it like, your baptism? Maybe the water was cold. (It sure was two weeks ago!) Maybe you were nervous. Maybe you were baptized outside, in a creek or the ocean.
Ginger, by the way, was baptized in an irrigation canal near the Mexico border. I love hearing her tell that story.
Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River. John, the scripture says, “proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” John, it seems, didn’t quite understand why Jesus came to him to be baptized; I think many of us share John’s confusion. Why would the one person who is without sin need to undergo a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins?”
Matthew’s gospel quotes John as saying, “I should be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?” The gospel of Luke, meanwhile, rushes through Jesus’ baptism, and John’s gospel is so embarrassed by the whole thing that it leaves out the baptism story completely.
And why did John baptize in the Jordan? Why did he make people go all the way out into the desert? Why not just use the pools, aqueducts, or streams closer to the city?
Because baptism was a reenactment of the Exodus story, when the whole nation of Israel left Egypt, wandered through the desert, and then passed through the Jordan River, becoming a whole new people. There, in the Jordan River, their old life in Egypt and their old ways of living were finally laid to rest. There, they died to their old selves and received a new life.
Our baptism brings us into this story, just as Jesus’ baptism did for him. Our baptism unites us in Christ’s death, which I think took place at his baptism at least as much as it did at his crucifixion. It was at his baptism that Jesus really gave up his life. It was there in the Jordan River that he gave up his own personal, selfish desires. It was there that he gave up any thought of living for himself.
He gave up his life. He gave it up for God.
From that moment on, he would be living a life that was not his own. His life, the life he had, was in Nazareth, where he made a living as a carpenter. But that man – the carpenter, living a quiet life in Nazareth – that man died when he stepped into the Jordan River.
The man who emerged out of the water was now fully committed to doing God’s work. He no longer had his own agenda. Only God’s agenda mattered now. God would direct his life; God would lead him completely.
The apostle Paul understood this. Paul referred to himself as a servant of Christ; and Christ, obviously, lived his life in service to God. In the first century, a servant is one who has placed himself under the control of another. One could almost say that a first century servant was under the ownership of another. A first-century servant no longer had his own life. This was an agreement made between a servant and his master, which usually was a way of paying off a debt that could not otherwise be repaid. And so, at least until the debt was repaid, the servant’s life belonged to his master.
When he was baptized, Jesus gave up his own life to God; but, in return, he found a new life: a new life in God. And, according to Paul, if we have been crucified with Christ, united in his death, then we are also united with Christ in newness of life. “If we have died with Christ, we will also live with him.”
See, being crucified with Christ is only half the story.
Best of all, nothing can destroy this new kind of life. Not even a crucifixion. The Romans thought that they were killing Jesus, son of Joseph, a carpenter from the town of Nazareth. Well, that man that they thought they were crucifying was, in a very real sense, already dead.
This new being, living a new life in God … well, no weapon formed can prosper over new life in God. The Roman swords, clubs, whips, and even their cross had no power over the Godlife Jesus was now living.
And that’s the life that we share with Christ.
We do suffer with Christ. Those whips and floggings really do hurt. The pain and suffering are real. The blood is real.
But none of that can destroy us. For we share a life with Christ that not even the cross can destroy.
Now, sometimes – a lot of the time, actually – it seems that there is a struggle between the old life and the new life. We don’t want to give up that old life completely. How much more peaceful it is to spend our days quietly, at home in Nazareth, making our tables and chairs and sleeping in our own bed in our own little house.
The apostle Paul knows that this new life in Christ is infinitely better than the old life he has given up, and yet he can’t help longing for that old life, just like the Israelites in the desert on their way to the promised land couldn’t help but long for their old life in Egypt. Paul missed his old life, and sometimes tried to get that old self, that person named Saul, to rise from the dead.
In the 7th chapter of Romans, he says: “I don’t understand it. For I do not do what I want, but instead do the very thing I hate. I delight in the law of God, but find that I am captive to the law of sin.”
I don’t know about you, but I know too well what Paul is talking about. My new life in Christ is the best thing ever, and yet there are times when I want to stay in Nazareth, times when I want to go back to Egypt, times when I want to live my life.
I want a nice home in a quiet neighborhood. I want to be able to send my kids to college and my wife on that cruise she’s always wanted to go on. I want a TV with a remote that isn’t broken. I want to be able to take Ethan to see a show on Broadway and Tristan to see the Tillamook Cheese Factory. (He loves cheese.) I want to be able to afford an annual pass to Disneyland.
This is my life. I have a hard time letting it go. This is my agenda. This is what I want. I am so tempted to think of it all as perfect. If I had all these things, then life would be perfect.
But in what I just said, there is nothing about love. There is nothing in that vision about justice. There is nothing there about compassion or hope or peace.
In fact, an overly zealous pursuit of the things I want can very easily get in the way of pursuing the things God wants.
And if that happens – when that happens – it becomes sin.
I have been baptized into Christ Jesus. I have repented of my old life, and confessed that I have at times placed more importance on what I want than on what God wants. Unlike Jesus, I cannot fully cast off my old life on my own. The temptation is just too strong. I am weak and imperfect.
But as Paul says in the 8th chapter of Romans, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Where we fail, the Spirit succeeds. Therefore I can consider myself dead to sin and alive to God. I can share in the new life where hope and justice and love and compassion reign, the new life that cannot be destroyed.
As Paul says: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” who makes all things possible.
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