This morning’s entry from The Mockingbird Devotional: Good News for Today (and Every Day) comes from none other than Gil Kracke:
If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. (Romans 6:5, NIV)
I try to imagine how to approach a verse like this, one that stands with such vast profundity in such simple brevity. What words could be placed beneath these, which seem to carry such a weight as to move whole epochs? And yet it is wonderfully and maddeningly simple: the verse very simply dispels the ultimate fear that binds our timid hearts, that keeps someone from believing and trusting that for him or for her—for you and for me—there is the possibility of forgiveness.
This is a word for those for whom hell on earth is not hard to imagine, where it seems all too close to reality. It is a word for those who are so gripped with remorse from something in the past that living in its wake is like death to them. It is a word for one whose “gig is up,” who has received a quick and public exposure. It is a word for the one suffering a silent, slow death—a twisting and lonely life. It is a word for anyone who can resonate with the image that we each are the “walking dead.”
The wounds we carry (given or self-inflicted) are never to be minimized; it is no accident that our risen Lord carried with him the scars of his crucifixion. But as Tim Keller once observed, deeply wounded people are often deeply selfish people: they cannot not think of themselves and their wounds.
Where are these wounds for you? What afflictions do you find yourself brooding on or pushing into conversations with others? With these words from Paul, we are given hope that someone lifts us from the self-absorption our wounds crave. This is the collision of God’s grace into our wounds. Something besides me resurrects me.
Paul has no naïve understanding of people. He squares up to our bounden relationship to death, and still he asks, “Don’t you know that you have died to sin; how can you live in it any longer? As you have died to it, are you going to assume the position of giving it power, vivifying it for your own pain and pleasure? No, you cannot—you have died to sin! As we have died to sin, we have shared with Christ in his baptism into death; if we have been united with him into his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.” United in his resurrection—this is something besides us restoring life to our wounded souls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jUP7KB1lrE&w=600
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One response to “Hopelessly Devoted: Romans Chapter Six Verse Five”
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Romans 6 is not about the “possiblity” of all sinners being forgiven. Romans 6 teaches that Christ’s death sets the elect apart by means of legal identification with Christ. The reason sin shall not reign is NOT to enable us to “not practice sin (so much) anymore”. The reason sin shall not reign over those sanctified by Christ’s death is that they are now no longer under the law.
Romans 6 is about Christ the public representative of the elect being in history under sin and death. Romans 6:7 “For one who has died has been justified from sin. 8 Now since we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death NO LONGER has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died HE DIED TO SIN once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.
Christ was never under grace. Christ was under law. But Christ is no more under law.. Christ was at one time under the law because of the imputed sins of the elect. Romans 6 is about Christ’s condemnation by the law and His death as satisfaction of that law. Christ after His resurrection is no longer under law. Christ’s elect, after their legal identification with Christ’s death, are no longer under law.
Christ was never under the power of sin in the sense of being able to sin. Christ was always unable to sin. The only way Christ was ever under the power of sin is by being under the guilt of sin. The guilt of the elect’s sin was legally transferred by God to Christ. Christ’s death to sin was death to the guilt of sin, and since the elect are united with His death, the death of the elect is also a death to the guilt of sin. Romans 6:7: “For one who has died has been justified from sin.”
Yet many readers tell us that “set free from sin” must mean the elect’s transformation by the Holy Spirit so that Christians cannot habitually sin (or that their new nature cannot sin) They tell us that justification was in Romans chapter five and that chapter six must be about something more if it’s to be a real answer to the question “why not sin?”.
But Romans 6 does not talk about Christ or His people not habitually sinning. Romans 6 locates the cause of “sin not reigning” in “not being under the law” Romans 6:14 says, “For sin shall not by your master, because you are not under law but under grace.”