A number of years ago there was a film by Clint Eastwood entitled “the Unforgiven”. Eastwood played the role of a gunslinger who was trying to put behind him the life of violence that he lived in his younger years and live his life as a family man. Yet his past caught up with him. Because of his history as a gunfighter, he was asked to travel to a town and right a wrong that had been done and then swept under the rug. The film was ultimately about a man who had done bad things trying to come to terms with those things, hoping to find some goodness and worth in the life of violence he had lived in his younger days.
While not all of us have been wild west gun slingers and lived a life that skirted the edges of the law, we have all done things that we are not proud of. We have all done things that we know are wrong. Every one of us has skeletons hidden in our closet that we would like to keep locked up tight and put away where we don’t have to see them or hear from them or deal with them. All of us carry around guilt from our former actions and would like to find some sort of redemption from those past sins.
Our Epistle text from Romans 6 speaks to this very topic. In our text Paul talks about our past, about who we were as compared to who we now are. It is about those skeletons that we have in our closets, it is about our previous way of life as compared to the life that we now live, the life that we have now been given, the life that is a life of holiness and sanctification, a life that is lived in the service and slavery of God and leaves behind slavery to our sinful impulses.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. [21] But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. [22] But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.
And, what is most wonderful is that all of this takes place within the context of a discussion of baptism. Romans chapter 6 is the place where Paul offers a theological treatment of this wonderful doctrine so that he might teach us just how complete a job God has done to set us free from our sin.
This discussion is also quite timely, seeing as today was the baptism of my own daughter, wich is the second of 3 baptisms this month with more scheduled for the next. We have had a good number of baptisms here at
Romans 6 begins with these words, “What shall we say then, shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin live in it any longer! For don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”
Our text, that talks about our new life of holiness and sanctification – who we were and who we now are is built on of the foundation laid down in the opening verses of chapter 6 that all have to do with baptism. You who were baptized, your old sinful self was crucified. The skeletons that you have in your closet are dead and washed away. Christ has made you clean. Christ has set you free from sin. Christ has made you holy!
You wanna talk about skeletons? You wanna talk about sin and living a life that is ruled by sin? You wanna talk about past mistakes and baggage and a closet filled to the top with skeletons? (This is the place to do it). According to Paul, you who were baptized died to these sins. He says don’t keep doing them, don’t live in them, don’t live with them. Kill them, crucify them, confess them to Christ and kill them on the cross and don’t live in them any longer. Yes, but oddly enough, if baptism is about cleaning out your closet and doing away with your past sins, then why do we baptize babies? As I said, today I baptized my daughter. We have had a run on baptisms lately and will have a few more in the coming weeks.
Ever since Tori was born I have been a very proud father and I wanted to show off my new baby girl. I printed off a picture of her that I taped to the office window so that anyone who was interested could see our new addition to our family. At least in my opinion it’s a pretty good picture. We managed to snap the photo while she was sleeping (obviously then taken during the daylight hours – if we would have taken it at night she would have been wide awake). But she looks so peaceful! She looks beautiful, perfect, one of the best looking, most beautiful babies I have ever seen – definitely in the top 3, anyway. (I might be a little biased) What skeletons can she have? She is barely old enough to have a closet, let alone skeletons to put in the closet! What sins does she have to die for?
You and I might not be able to see them in the photograph, but they are there! When I am slightly delayed in preparing her bottle and hear her impatient cries, I can hear that sinful heart,(that old sinful flesh, the dead works and dead thoughts and dead flesh of her sinful members that Paul talks about here in our text) ringing in her voice. But even that is not the most convincing evidence. The best and most convincing evidence of Tori’s sinful heart, of my sinful heart, your sinful heart, the heart of the goodest goody two shoes is that we all die. Paul says in our text that the wages of sin is death. If Tori was perfect, if you were perfect, if I was perfect then we wouldn’t die. We would live forever, we wouldn’t have wages to be compensated for. As such we sin, we are sinners, the just compensation for that sin is death. People of all ages, races, religions, and persuasions die every day – it doesn’t matter who you are. We are all sinners, we all die, we all deserve to die and as such we all have skeletons in our closets, we all have sins hidden away in our heart, we all are guilty and all deserve the worst of what Christ our righteous judge would give. Even the perfect little baby in the peaceful and serene photograph pasted to the window of the church office is a hardened sinner who deserves from God nothing but death.
And were it not for Jesus that death would be forever. Were it not for Jesus that death, that people die would be an eternal death, a punishment that would last forever. That would be a never ending suffering and separation from God. But because of the promise of salvation, because of Christ’s sacrifice for us and for our sin when he died on the cross our death is not an eternal death, it is not a death that occurs under the full wrath of the law, it is a death that occurs under the gift and thus we are rescued from this death and given the hope of life that we will live forever and ever without end.
Jesus died for us, in our place on the cross. Jesus suffered that separation from God that we have earned because of our sin when he cried out to the heavenly father who had forsaken him. We were slaves of sin – our bodies of walking death were trapped in that death, the way all dead things are.
If you are dead you are dead and there is nothing you can do about it until someone comes along to revive you. When Jesus suffered our death, he earned the right to be the one who revives us. He can take our death away from us because he has already suffered our death for us. And so he does, in baptism we die with Christ, his death becomes our death so that he can then give his life as our life. The life we live we live to Christ!
The beauty of this biblical truth is that you and I who have a closet so filled up with skeletons we can barely keep the door closed – it bursting at the scenes like in one of those old cartoons – someone goes to open a door and as soon as they do they are buried with all of the stuff that was crammed into it – our closets are so filled with our sins that we want to keep the door shut, we know the risk of opening it up and revisiting everything that we have stuffed in there. But then Jesus comes along, opens the door, is buried underneath the pile of sins that spill out and picks them all up, not to stuff them back in but to carry them out to the cross so that he can suffer the penalty for them.
Lately every time you turn on the television there is a report of the devastation that has occurred because of the flooding in the
Water is certainly powerful, powerful enough to wipeout and wash away. But that is water in mass quantities. One drop can’t do much – unless it is combined with the life giving and life saving word of God. When that water is poured over the head and the heart of every sinner who comes for baptism that sinner, that man woman or child who is brought here to the font is swamped, is overcome, is drowned in a
And this flood is one that never crests and never recedes. The bible calls it a spring welling up to eternal life. It is a flood that keeps rushing, that keeps raging, that keeps washing and cleansing so that every time your sins try to pass the current they are swept away.
As Paul writes our text, he is writing to address the feelings of some that Paul is encouraging sin or excusing sin, that once you are baptized you can go ahead and sin as much as you want because there is enough forgiveness to go around. If you try hard enough you can build an island in the floodwaters, you can pile up enough sins to anchor yourself in your unrighteousness. But why would you want to? Those sins, those ways of unrighteousness only lead to death. The flood waters that would sweep you away lead to righteousness, to holiness and to eternal life.
Today God has swept away the skeletons in Tori’s little closet. In your life Christ has done the same for you. In your baptism, you have been filled up and flooded out with God’s forgiveness and love. Let’s not build islands of sin, lets resist the temptation to weigh anchor hold on to our old ways that lead to death, lets ride the wave, be overcome in God’s forgiveness and be overcome in living in his righteousness that leads to eternal life.
Amen.
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