I apologize for the title of this sermon. I was hoping that you would see the irony in
the guy with the Gomer Pyle accent asking, “Are y’all ignernt?” Well, that’s you humorous moment for the
morning. Actually, in Romans 6:3 Paul
asks us that very question, “Are you ignorant?”
In my humble opinion most translations gloss it over to make it more
polite writing “Do you not know…?” But,
the Greek could just as easily be translated quite literally as “Are you
ignorant…?” What Paul is asking is “Are
you unknowing” with respect to a particular matter of the faith and ignorant
simply means unknowing. Of course, this
is all one grand word play to get your attention.
The Greek word for “unknowing” or “ignorant”, agnoeo, is the word from which we get
the word agnostic. A person is agnostic
if they don’t understand something because they have no personal, experiential
knowledge of the subject. This is what
people mean when they say they are agnostic with respect to God. They have no personal experience or knowledge
of God and therefore are not going to make any claims in the matter. One could say that someone who is agnostic is
ignorant in matters pertaining to God, but that sounds rather crude to our ears
today, but back in the day it would have been okay to say that.
So what are we ignorant of according to Paul? Well, (this is a huge one) it is the meaning
of Baptism. Are we agnostic, ignorant,
experientially unknowing of the reality that Baptism is participation in the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul
lays it on heavy saying we were buried together with Jesus into death, so that
just as he was raised from the dead with, through, and by means of the glory of
the Father (which is the Holy Spirit) so also we, being raised with Jesus, now
exist in an existentially new existence (which he calls “in Christ”) that is
free of the tyranny of sin. We are no
longer slaves of a master called Sin, doing whatever it wants us to do. Rather, we live in the realm of grace.
Do you know what grace is? Our theological tradition, the Reformed
Tradition, in good ole medieval fashion tends to begin talking about grace from
the human side focusing on our undeservedness when it comes to the love of
God. Add to that, many in our tradition
focus on a courtroom or penal understanding of grace that leaves us thinking
that grace is an undeserved acquittal releasing us from the penalty of death
for our sin (our bad behaviour) because Jesus died for us. In this vein of thought grace simply becomes God
has making possible a favourable eternal outcome for those who will believe the
right things about him and Jesus and live accordingly. Those who don’t believe and live rightly
don’t get this favourable outcome nor do those who live accordingly yet are
unbelieving. This line of thought simply
makes believing to be a new requirement of the law and has nothing to do with
grace.
Grace is that God invites and physically,
existentially brings us into his presence where he is favourably disposed
towards us and he, the Creator and the Sovereign Lord of all Creation, listens
to us and acts for our best interest.
Our undeservedness, though we may feel it, has nothing to do with it. Like alcoholics miraculously freed from their
compulsion to drink to live a new life, so God in his grace (his presence,
favour, and power to act) that he manifested as the new life in Christ Jesus has freed us
from enslavement to a tyrant called Sin.
Sin is the human condition in which we don’t know God
and instead create idols mostly in our own image that we put in God’s place and
compulsively serve to our own detriment.
It is life under compulsion to serve lies – addictions, grudges, being
controlling, greed, anxiety, pleasure, happiness. To fix our inability to know him, God revealed
himself to us in and as Jesus Christ and has made himself personally available
to us as the Holy Spirit who in turn unites us to Jesus so that we know him and
share in the relationship that he and the God the Father have. The outcome is that we know ourselves to be
the beloved children of God, loved as much God loves Jesus himself, and that
the Holy Spirit is at work in us destroying our idolatries and freeing us to be
more like Jesus. That all adds up to being what grace is.
Sin’s tyranny could only be broken by dying. Twice in this passage Paul says there is
something we do “know” meaning we are not ignorant of or agnostic about with
respect to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
First, God has nullified, rendered inoperative, destroyed the old
humanity that is enslaved by Sin by the crucifixion and death of Jesus and just
as he was raised from the dead to a new kind of life, so also we in the realm
of faith live a new existence in him in which we encounter God and experience his
grace.
In verse four the word for new means existentially
new. We in Christ are made new right
down at the core of our being and this newness begins to arise over time. It’s not like going to the dentist to get a
rotten tooth pulled and leaving knowing you need to floss and brush better. It’s like the tooth is miraculously made new
and you want to floss and brush better to show it off. We have a new life in Jesus Christ. This new life is grace-filled life, life
lived with, in, and by means of being in God’s presence, enjoying God’s favour,
and his acting in the situations of our lives for our benefit in Christ, which means to make us more like Christ.
So, the first thing Paul says we “know” with respect
to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection is that we are no longer enslaved to
sin. The second thing is that due to
Jesus’ death and resurrection death no longer has lordship over us. Death is not the final word. We need not live in fear of death. The fear of death is an anxiety that always
makes us serve ourselves inordinately to the harm of ourselves and others. Jesus’ once and for all death and
resurrection makes resurrection and new life in him the last word. We are to consider ourselves dead to sin and free to live for God.
Coming back to Baptism, there are many metaphors we
float around for Baptism – a washing away of sin, the sign and symbol of God’s
forgiveness, or an event similar to Old Testament circumcision marking us as
one of the people of God. I think those
metaphors are secondary to the primary understanding of Baptism that Paul gives
us here. In Baptism we have been
crucified dead, buried, and raised to new life with Christ. This is an existential fact not a teaching
metaphor. So, let us not be ignorant of
the fact that we really do have a new life in Christ Jesus. We have died and been raised with him because
the Holy Spirit is with and in us uniting us to Jesus. We can look back at our Baptism and say “I’m
free.” We can now live life for God,
life that is filled with his grace. We
don’t have to continue on in the SOS (Same old S#*t) of the old life. We can pick up our mats and live this new
life for God as Jesus disciples, studying his life and living accordingly. Amen.
