In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
(Romans 6:11-14)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
There were times when I could be an irritating teenager. And before anybody says anything – yes, there are some (perhaps even some who are here today) who would argue that I've never really outgrown that! But I find myself reflecting back to Grade 13; way back in the days when there was a Grade 13. My English teacher that year was Mr. Arthur. Mr. Arthur also taught history, but he happened to be my English teacher. I used to get really good marks in history, though, and Mr. Arthur knew that so sometimes he talked about history with me, and one day – I don't remember why the subject came up – Mr. Arthur said to me, “Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.” “No, he didn't,” I said in reply. “Slavery wasn't ended until after the end of the Civil War.” “You're wrong,” he said, “it was Lincoln, and it was before the Civil War ended.” “I think I'm right, Mr. Arthur.” And we left it at that. Or so I thought. The next day, Mr. Arthur handed me a paper. It was a copy of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and he had highlighted the date on it. January 1, 1863. More than two years before the end of the Civil War. “Read that,” he said with a little smile. I took it home and read it. I then took out a pen and underlined the part that said that the people who had been supposedly freed from slavery by this document were people who were being held in slavery “in those states or parts of states currently declared to be in rebellion against the authority of the United States.” I then added a note that pointed out that this meant that no slaves were actually freed by the Emancipation Proclamation because (1) those who would have been freed by it were in states that had rebelled and so the slaveowners wouldn't likely obey Lincoln, and (2) Delaware, Maryland and Kentucky were all slave states but the slaves there weren't freed by this because those states weren't a part of the rebellion. So – in that moment anyway – the Emancipation Proclamation didn't actually free anybody. I also helpfully included a copy of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution (the amendment that actually did abolish slavery everywhere in the United States) and highlighted the date on it – December 6, 1865 - several months after the Civil War ended. Mr. Arthur said “thanks,” and said he'd look it over. But he never talked to me about the subject again. And, irritating though I may have been, I wasn't irritating enough to go back to him the next day and say “I told you so.” After all, Mr. Arthur controlled my Grade 13 English mark! So I've saved the “I told you so” for today – but unfortunately Mr. Arthur isn't here to hear it!
I thought about that incident (and about the Emancipation Proclamation) when I read the last verse of today's passage: “For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.” And it struck me that here is a classic difference between the ways of the world and the way of Christ. Abraham Lincoln was a great president. Many people think he was the greatest president the United States has ever had. But he was a politician – and, you know, sometimes the promises and rhetoric offered by politicians don't always match the results we see. We don't have that problem in Canada, of course, but Lincoln? He was a politician. His Emancipation Proclamation was important, and it was the first step perhaps toward ending slavery – but it didn't end it. In fact, it didn't free a single slave when it took effect. In the immediate moment, the promise didn't match the result. And there's the difference between the ways of the world and the way of Christ. With Jesus, the result always matches the promise! And, one of the things that Jesus promises us is freedom. Perhaps not quite the same kind of freedom Lincoln was promising slaves in the American south – but freedom nevertheless.
I've been speaking for a couple of weeks about the new life in Christ. How it happens, the outward characteristics of it, how we gain new life and how we display that new life to those around us. Today, just briefly, I'd like to think about the practical benefit of the new life in Christ to us. We should never make ourselves the first thought. It's always more important to think of how our faith impacts others than on what it does for us (otherwise, faith can become a selfish thing – a theme I'm going to explore a bit next week) but still faith does have an impact on us as well. And I believe Paul summed up that impact very well when he wrote that “sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.” What Christian faith promises us is freedom – and not in a future-oriented “some day” type of way that we have to wait for. The promise is freedom in the here and now. The promise is that with Christ we can live a life of real freedom. According to Paul, freedom from a Christian perspective means that we rejoice in two things: that sin is no longer our master, and that we live under grace. I just want to finish up this mini-series by reflecting on those two ideas.
As I said a couple of weeks ago, “sin” is simply anything we do that isn't consistent with what God wants us to do. Often, those things become habits or addictions, and it's hard to break away from them. They begin to control us, and we lose the ability to conquer them. You know the old saying that “quitting smoking is easy: I've done it lots of times.” Back to Paul in Romans 7 that I mentioned two weeks ago: he said that he kept doing the things he knew he shouldn't be doing, but he wasn't able to do the things he knew he should do. That's what happens. We know we're doing something we shouldn't be doing, but we can't stop. We allow the addiction, the behaviour, the sin to have control over us. The reality is that quitting a habit or a sin can be one of the hardest things to do in life. Not impossible, but hard. But Romans 6:14 says, “sin shall no longer be your master.” A lot of people read this and think it's a command. They think we're being instructed to make this happen, or else. But in reality it's not a command - it’s a powerful promise from God! Rather than reading it with a sense of fear and foreboding - “Oh no, I better make sure that sin isn't my master or I'm in big trouble with God!” - we need to read it as a promise that God is going to back up. “Sin isn't going to be my master, because God has promised that and will help me.” Right there you gain a new perspective on life. It doesn't mean that sin will never reappear, or that we'll conquer the behaviours perfectly. It does mean that Jesus will free us from sin's tyranny and allow us to live a life of freedom, because we “not under the law, but under grace.”
Sin comes from law – and law both proscribes behaviour and prescribes consequences. To be no longer under the law means to be freed to live in love and without the fear that we haven't done it well enough for God to actually love us. It means that while we may not be able to be all that God would like us to be, God will accept us with all our faults and all our limitations and all our weaknesses and even all our sins; that God will accept us as all that we're able to be in spite of those things. This is living under grace. “Grace” is how we speak of the generous love and mercy of God shown in Jesus. Grace is a gift given freely by God. Those “under grace” don't have to try to earn God's approval by living a righteous life and performing all sorts of acts of service. To live under grace is to live a life of gratitude and love. But that doesn't mean that we get lazy and simply take it easy for the rest of our lives. There are still consequences that flow from our sins and weaknesses – but they affect those around us and the relationships we have with them and we have to deal with that. But grace assures us that nothing affects our relationship with God; that God loves us with a love that will never end. That means we don't have to be worried about whether we've done the minimum required of us by God. Instead, living under grace, we should want to give our maximum to reflect God to the world, because without fearing that we have to do enough, now we're free to do what we can. And that's a huge difference.
A part of why it's a huge difference is because the way of Christ is so different from the ways of the world. As great a president as he may have been, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation didn't actually free anyone. Those desiring freedom had to wait. But when Paul, under divine inspiration, writes that we “are not under the law, but under grace” that's a promise that gets put into effect right away, without delay. It's one of the great things about being a Christian. We're free – free to be all that we can be without having to fear that it isn't good enough. That's a Christian Emancipation Proclamation!
No comments:
Post a Comment