Tomorrow Sunday January 12th 2014 at Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church of Irvine: “Wanted Dead and Alive” (Romans 6:1-11)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Christ was baptized and joined to us. We were baptized and joined to Christ.
This new relationship through Holy Baptism produces a real life, but too many Christians go through life ignorant about it. Romans 6:1-11 teaches what it means to LIVE as a baptized child of God.
If you know it, then you know that God wants you dead…constantly dead…and He wants you alive…constantly alive. Come to Church to hear this important proclamation so that through the Holy Spirit working through the Word and Sacrament you will be all the more equipped to live in your baptism.
What a great privilege it is for me to serve you. I rejoice!
Please invite a friend. Let us gather for Jesus to serve us!
Here is an excerpt from tomorrow’s sermon:
“Wanted: Dead and Alive”
(Pastor Espinosa wrote this outline on Romans 6:1-11 originally published in Concordia Pulpit Resources, Volume 15, Part 3, May 22nd-August 21st, 2005, Concordia Publishing House; the inserted portion marked with an asterisk is from an essay written by Pastor Espinosa in the book, C.F.W. Walther Churchman And Theologian, Concordia Publishing House, 2011: 42-44)
Proclaimed at Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church of Irvine
January 12th, 2014
The Baptism of Our Lord
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Introduction: In movies about the Old West we’ve seen the posters that say “Wanted: Dead or Alive!” The word or was quite significant! All that mattered was that the criminal was brought to justice! If the bounty hunter expedited matters, he would still collect his reward! The Lord our God posts a similar-sounding poster, but it’s significantly changed by replacing the word or with the word and: God wants us dead and alive. God wants to see the old man in us dead, but he’s even more resolved that a new man come forth very much alive. As Paul teaches us in our [epistle] text,
Through our baptism into Christ, our old man is dead to sin and our new man is alive to God in Christ.
Part I: Sin doesn’t live here anymore!
A. Just when the sinful flesh would confuse the Gospel with license to sin, God presents the impossibility (v 1)!
1. More sin, so more grace? Sounds logical.
2. Worse, it’s very appealing to the sinful nature, which will look for any excuse to make us return to its old ways (as, for example, in Rom 7:14-24). [consider specifically Rom 7:15b: “…I do the very thing I hate.”
B. It can’t be, however, because we died to sin (v 2)!
Illustration: 1 Cor 7:39 teaches, “A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord.” When her husband was living, she was bound to him, but when he died, she was free to have a new husband. Now plug this analogy into what Paul is saying here at the opening of Romans 6: We were once married to a “husband” called sin, but then we died. The marriage is over. The person God raised from sin and death is not the old person once married to sin, but a new person. And guess what? We remarried, but this time we’re married to God! If old sin comes knocking on our door, the old spouse doesn’t live there anymore!
Part II: We sin against God and our neighbor when we try to do the impossible!
A. That is, we try to stay married to the old and new spouse at the same time!
B. Not only is this nonsense, but it is also impossible.
1. If we continue to live for sin as our master, then we simply do not live for God.
2. The heart that willingly gives itself over to the old sinful nature is no longer a believing heart. Faith has died.
*[C.F.W. Walther helps us to understand this threat of willful sins] “It is important to realize that Walther explains his position [about willful sins] through the terminology ‘dominating sins.’ Walther says, ‘man loses the new life he received in Holy Baptism through dominating sins.’ While dominating sins also involve volition, they are not merely volitional. Walther also says that the ‘old [teachers] by “willful resistance” understand malicious, stubborn resistance [emphasis mine].’ To further clarify Walther’s position: this state of dominating, malicious, and stubborn resistance against God is ‘a false sense of security, not feeling God’s wrath over sin in [the] heart, not believing that [one] is by nature a lost and condemned sinner still loving sin, and not having a broken spirit, and not yet despairing of [oneself].’ That is to say, Walther’s version of sinning ‘willfully’ means that the pseudo-Christians have lost their vital conscientiousness that they are sinners, the very condition St. Paul has in Romans 7. This is exactly why such a person is dominated by sin and the reason why sin is their master in contradistinction to St. Paul’s admonition in Romans 6. For Walther, if one is truly a Christian then that Christian will be painfully aware of his sin….
9:30 am at Crean Lutheran High School.
In Jesus’ Love,
Pastor Espinosa