"Being Fully Alive" (Romans 6:1-11;17)

Introduction

Okay, so we appreciate God’s love, that comes rattling our way! Heaven has been torn open for us. We accept Jesus’ ministry and his great act of sacrificial love on our behalf. We make a decision to follow Jesus … now we are his disciple! We have made some public witness to this fact in baptism or testimony – we are now members of God’s Kingdom – citizens of heaven.

We also sense that we are called to be part of a community that worships together, shares together, and uses their gifts together! We sense our job description, i.e. to share God’s love (in some way or other) with everyone we meet. We have heard about the ‘great commission’ … about “going and making disciples”. We know that Jesus has promised us the Holy Spirit … to be with us always, and to make the seemingly impossible become possible!

So, what gets in the way?!?

What gets in the way of us being all of what we are called to be?

What stops us being fully alive?

·        Sin … a selfishness or self-centredness that inclines us toward certain desires; a failure to do what we know we should do (and what we have the capacity to do)

·        The old nature – especially the comfortable bits; where we can take various weaknesses a little too lightly (rather than allowing for remedial action)

·        Wallowing in guilt, instead of embracing forgiveness … because for some reason it’s preferable to change (maybe we like the sympathy)

·        Competing priorities, where seemingly powerful agendas (often career related, or finance related; sometimes family related) overwhelm us

·        Lack of focus (or understanding of what being a disciple means) – perhaps we have not had enough teaching, or not reflected enough on the teaching we have had

·        Life issues … e.g. illness, various troubles, financial woes

·        Bitterness (lack of forgiveness)

·        Shame i.e. not forgiving ourselves, or not valuing ourselves as much as God does

·        Lack of gratitude – finding ways to be grateful releases us; the opposite restricts us

·        A misunderstanding of freedom … freedom that has no reference point – that we can do whatever we like – laxity or apathy (especially addressed by Romans 6:1-2).

Responding to Grace

Sometimes, as Paul points out (Romans 6:1-2), we can take “grace” for granted. God has done so much for us, and we just keep lapping it up … but we don’t turn it into anything … we don’t actually bear that grace fully in our lives – we don’t allow change to take place. We have met Jesus, but we still get stuck where we always have been. And then we just get down on ourselves, which eventually leads (if not resolved) to getting down on everyone else.

It seems, from the way Paul expressed himself, that people of his time thought that if they sinned all the more, then there would be all the more grace to enjoy. Or to put it another way, as there was so much grace, they could still live as they liked. Or at least there was the potential for thinking this way! In other words, it didn’t matter if they sinned or not, because there would always be grace to rely on. ‘If God will forgive me later, why be good now?!’

But there are so many problems with this thinking! What are they???

·        This way of thinking is STATIC – there’s NO growth here:

We are not meant to stay static, relying on being forgiven time and time again, but we are meant to be a party to being changed into the image of Christ Jesus. To continually allow sin to happen while relying on God’s good graces for forgiveness is actually living under ‘law’ all over again and remaining enslaved (or ‘captive’) to sin. If we accept that Jesus died on our behalf, then we are committing to the death of sin in ourselves from this point on. [And that is what ‘water baptism’ demonstrates – a death to sin and old ways and a rising to something better.]

·        It’s SHORT-SIGHTED:

Salvation is a process that we embark on at one point in time, but then allow to grow and flourish (refer Romans 6:4 … so we too might walk in newness of life). Whereas, once upon a time, repentance was a decision to be debated and made, now repentance is a way of life … it is natural, it happens naturally each time we fall short of the mark, we much more spontaneously seek forgiveness; and not so that we can sin again, but rather that we can become more fully alive. We are less and less in open rebellion.

·        It’s SELFISH:

The grace we receive is not to be contained selfishly, but rather lived so that it might be shared (and it can’t be shared where it is not proven to be real nor effective). We are not just grace-recipients, but also should be grace-bearers. We should seek to live a life that is obviously invigorated with hope and purpose and peace … which has been sourced from outside of us – through a relationship with our Creator.

Paul says (v.2), in response to this notion of keeping on sinning (because grace abounds), “by no means …” (or, “no way known …”, or, “total nonsense”, “certainly not”, “it’s not on”)! It is possible to cheapen or waste God’s grace, by ignoring the call to embrace new life. The evidence of grace is not so much the forgiven sinner, but more so the transformed life.

Disruption to Worship

It is tragic to see wasted lives where there has been the opportunity for life to abound. Often, there is the need to just get past one problem area, or move on from one past hurt, and then there can be freedom. There is such joy to be found, and there is such good to be achieved, when people come to serve God and others with all their hearts and hands.

One area of life, amongst others, that might be negatively affected by an unwillingness or incapacity to become fully alive, would be … our worship. It’s difficult, maybe introspectively seen as hypocritical, to let loose in worshipping God, if we are hanging on to things that don’t belong in this worship space. So we can’t worship and we don’t worship (not really)! We stay away, or we stay reserved, or we go through the motions – because we just have not felt that release to worship; we feel the barriers, and we can’t break through!

Breaking Through

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11). This is our action plan!

To “consider” something a certain way … is to come to a conclusion or make a determination on how we view something. In this case, we need to make the decision to actively have the mindset … that we have died to sin and become alive in Jesus. THIS IS WHO WE ARE NOW!! Not just sinners saved by grace, but new people living new lives! No pretending … “believers should consider themselves to be what God in fact has made them” (F F Bruce).

Dead to Sin?

What is different when we have “died to sin”? Our earthly context means there are still significant temptations that we come across; however sin is now just a temptation, rather than a controlling power. We still have the capacity to sin. But we also have more capacity (in Jesus) to say “no” to sin. Although it remains possible for us to sin, there has been a radical change in our attitude to sin.

There is also this tension in which the ‘old person’ that has been crucified must still be resisted. But, we mostly sense sin’s destructiveness to ourselves and others, and are therefore more likely to resist. We become more gradually invested in and committed to our new nature, and more easily sense when we may be acting out of the old nature (and be less tolerant about this). Once we fully grasp that our old life has ended (and the whole debt has been paid), we shall want to have nothing more to do with it (John Stott).

We have also gained vast spiritual resources from Jesus to call upon. Jesus’ presence in our lives gives us strength to defeat temptation. We take our example from Jesus, in the way he dispensed decisively with temptation and any pressure to take the wrong path (e.g. in the wilderness, with Peter, and in the garden). Sin, and the old nature, can be dispensed with through “disciplined dependence on God” (G R Osborne).

As Martin Luther apparently said, “We can’t keep the birds from flying around our head, but we needn’t let them build a nest in our hair”.

Being Fully Alive

Being a slave to sin is a downhill road – our perception is distorted, our will is overpowered, obedience to God is impossible (R B Hays). Being fully alive, on the other hand, is having a mastery over those areas of life that may otherwise have a tendency to disrupt us (and sometimes entirely so). And that mastery, or that ‘master’, is Jesus (our ‘Lord’). We become alive to God “in Christ Jesus” (v.11). Being “in Christ Jesus” suggests that we have constant and growing communion with Jesus. It is NOT more effort that will help us, but more Jesus.

To have more Jesus means allowing the Holy Spirit more room in which to work, but also means knowing Jesus better from the reports we have available on his life. Later in Romans 6 (in verse 17), we read, Paul speaking to believers in Rome, But thanks be to God, that you, having once been slaves to sin, have become obedient from the heart – to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. There are vital things we need to know and deeply internalise. We have had ‘open heart surgery’, so to speak, when we accept Jesus, so that we might become completely different – wholeheartedly living in the way of Jesus.

There are the demands of discipleship, the ethical requirements of faith, and the principles that must guide us in our interactions with each other and the world (E F Harrison). We have to know these and put them into practice. This stuff shapes our lives! The ‘believer’ has entered a new realm of existence and has begun the process of changing old habits and patterns toward now fitting the Jesus way of life they have chosen (G R Osborne). And we have to stay in this process – towards its completion!

If God loves me so much that he tore heaven open so that I could have a relationship with him and join his community, then I will respond precisely as he desires. Thus grace is NOT licence (to do whatever we please), but rather, grace is fuel (to do God’s work) – Bryan Chapell. If the first way to be “alive in Christ Jesus” is to allow space for the Holy Spirit to work, the second way to become “alive in Christ Jesus” is to be active in Jesus’ current body i.e. the church. Jesus left his community to come to earth so that we might be fitted to join his community – both functionally and eternally … thus creating a bridge – heaven to earth and earth to heaven.

Conclusion

The level of God’s love that has embraced us actually demands that we respond wholeheartedly … properly responding to free (yet costly) grace … letting go of certain sinful pursuits … actively dealing with the stuff that gets in the way … proactively embracing Jesus as our ‘master and commander’ – in so doing, finding the true freedom in which to thrive.

We will not be like the released prisoner, who, unable to find a new path, reoffends themselves back to a prison cell. It is rather to say, “I [have] made my choice, [I’m] not going back to history” (L Wesley)! I will not seek to undo what God in his great grace has done for me!! Let us always remember who we are in Christ Jesus. You must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11).

It is in being fully alive that we find our true and complete identity … the person we were originally created to be. True freedom then, rather than doing anything we feel like, rather than being any sort of ‘free agents’, is doing those things that count, under the Lordship of Jesus, uninterrupted and uncompromised by the old ways.