Romans 6: Mar 18, 07
How We are made New, Romans 6, March 18, 2007
Change or die? What if you were given that choice for real? Could you make a change when it really mattered?
According to Alan Deutschman and the experts who have done scientific studies on change, the odds are 9 to 1 against you that you would be able to make a change.
As we know medical doctors are very respected in our society, but according to research done in places like Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical Schools, 90 % of people do not follow their doctor’s counsel if it requires some kind of change in their lifestyle.
According to Dr. Edward Miller, Dean of the Medical School and Chief Executive Officer of the Hospital at Johns Hopkins University, patients with arteries that are so clogged that it hurts too much to take a long walk or to make love and who need to undergo coronary by-pass or angioplasty surgery are told if you want to stop the course of your heart disease before it kills you--you have to switch to a healthier lifestyle. You have to stop smoking, stop drinking, stop overeating, start exercising, and relieve your stress—but very few do. According to Dr. Edward Miller, “If you look at people after coronary artery by-pass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle.”
Scaring people with the “facts,” and telling them to either change or die, does not cause people to change.
According to Alan Deutschman, author of Change or Die, the only way a person can change is to have a relationship with a person or a community that inspires and sustains hope, a relationship that enables you to learn and practice and repeat a new set of habits, and a relationship to help you learn new ways of thinking about your life.
To put it succinctly, there are 3 ways to change according to Deutschman—relate, repeat, and reframe or New hope, new habits, new thinking.
As far as I know, Alan Deutschman is not a Christian, but his principles of change parallel the kinds of change a person can experience through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Someone has said all truth is God’s truth, no matter where it is found. If the principles of Christianity are true, then one would expect to find them in various sources that are not “Christian.”
Today we are going to look at a key passage of scripture that describes how change caqn occur for a person who has decided to follow Jesus Christ. If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Romans 6.
In Romans 6:1, Paul asks:
1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
In Romans 1-2 Paul describes how the human race has turned from God and therefore are separated from God—the one true source of life.
In Romans 1-3 Paul has argued that a person cannot bridge the gap between them and God, simply by trying to comply to the law of God. No-one can perfectly live out God’s law in both letter and spirit… God’s as a perfect being, requires perfection. This is why Paul says in Romans 3:20 noone will be justified in God’s sight through the law and why Paul says in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Paul says that the good news of the Gospel is this that god has provided another way for us to receive forgiveness of our sins and be restored to God.
Paul argues that if we put our faith in the faithfulness work of Jesus Christ who bore our sin and shame on the Cross, our sins can be forgiven, we can be restored to God.
There were many people in Paul’s day (and some in our own day) who object to this message that our sins can be forgiven and that they can be restored to God simply by putting their trust in what Jesus Christ has done. Those who object to this message say if you tell people they can simply be forgiven of their sins through the work of Christ, people will abuse that and they will say, “If God forgives me, why not sin?” And some of have likely thought, I’m tempted, I’ll sin and ask God to forgive me.
Or as Paul says in Romans 1 1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means!
Paul, while not backing away from the message that we can receive forgiveness of sins through the work of Jesus Christ, counters the argument that if we believe the Gospel that our sins can be forgiven by simply trusting in the work of Christ on the Cross…we can sin as we please.
Paul asks…
Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Paul says when we are baptized into Christ (which in Paul’s view was the practical beginning of the Christian life) a person dies and rises with Jesus Christ…
Some biblical scholars compare baptism to a marriage ceremony. It is common for a couple, of course, to be committed to each other before they are married.
If a couple makes a decision that they want to belong to each other for the rest of their lives, then may well decide to get married, exchange vows and weddings rings. They exchange their vows and wedding rings in the presence of God and before family and friends. Marriage becomes a kind of sign and seal for their relationship.
When I am officiating at a wedding, as some of you have likely heard me say, I will often say to the couple, “In a few minutes you will walk off this stage as husband and wife. You may not feel any different, but your lives will be different, because marriage has the power to change your lives as a whole.”
I have informally surveyed couples who have been together for some time (in some cases Christian, in some cases not Christian) and who then gotten married, and have asked the question, “Do you sense any difference in your relationship now that you are married?” In virtually case that I can recall, people have said, “We feel that our relationship is now secure now that we are married.”
Marriage is something instituted by God, so it would sense that a couple would now feel more secure as they commit themselves through the sacrament of marriage. And so it is in baptism. Though baptism, like marriage, may seem to be a simple, outward, public declaration of commitment, since it is a sacrament of God there is something very powerful about this act of obedience. Like a marriage ceremony does for a couple, baptism acts as a sign and seal of our salvation.
This is why the apostle Paul says in Romans 6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Paul looks back to his baptism and considers that the decisive point of change for him in relationship with God. And if you are here, and you know that you want to belong to God fully, and you want God to belong to you fully, and you have never made your own decision to follow Christ through the waters of baptism, I would invite to do so. I would invite you to do so, not only as an act of obedience to Christ and as way of following in his footsteps as Christ himself was baptized, but also so that more of the Spirit can be imparted to you. After Jesus was baptized, the Bible says the heavens opened and the Spirit came on him like a dove. If you want all of God and God to have all of you, and you want to have the Spirit powerfully active in your life, then follow Christ through the waters of baptism if you have never made that decision yourself.
Through following Christ and through baptism we can receive a new life and a new Spirit.
We have a new Spirit. Paul describes becoming new people (Romans 6:7-8).
I gave my life over to Christ as a teenager. Theologically, I didn’t really understand what I was doing, but I did notice that I was experiencing something inside me. I remembering going home after committing my life to Christ and searching out for a pornographic magazine that I had hidden in our garage behind some logs for the fireplace. I had bought that magazine with a good friend of mine at 7-11… we both went together. When we got I said to my friend, I’m guard the door in case your parents show, you by the magazine (here’s 2 dollars). So, it was our magazine, but I made a unilateral executive decision to burn that magazine.
I also remember going into my bedroom and taking down posters of these rock groups that I didn’t feel would honor God and in burning them too. I just had a new desire to live in a new kind of way. That was an example of what the Holy Spirit was doing in me.
What Paul is saying is that through our giving our life to Christ and our baptism in Christ we have been made new, we receive a new Spirit.
So Paul would respond say doesn’t the Gospel of Jesus that says our sins can be forgiven encourage to go on sinning and Paul would say, know because Gospel when we are united with Christ in baptism, we die to an old life, we receive a new life and new spirit that causes to want to follow the ways of God.
In verse 5 and following:
5 If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, [a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 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. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
Paul says that once you give your life over to Jesus Christ, you not only have a new relationship with a new master, Jesus Christ,but you also have a new status.
I owe the following ideas and illustrations to New Testament scholar, Tom Wright and the esteemed late British minister, Martin Lloyd Jones:
Imagine someone is renting a house from a landlord who turns out to be a bully, always demanding extra payments, coming into your house without asking, threatening you with legal action or violence of you don’t give in to his demands. You get used to doing what he says out of fear. There does not seem to be any way out, but then to your relief, you find somewhere else to live. Someone else pays off your remaining rent and you can leave.
You move out and settle into your new place, but to your horror a few days later the old landlord shows up at your door and barges into the house. He is angry and demands more money. He threatens to take you to court. The old habit returns. You are strongly tempted to pay him what he demands, just to get him to leave , but you know you are not his tenant any more. You have seen the paper work. His final bill was paid. Nothing more is owing.
Trembling, you get up and tell him to leave. He has no claim over you.
What Paul is saying in Romans 6:11 is like this. He says remember who you are, remember that you are no longer a slave of sin, you are no longer in “Adam,” but that you are in Christ and you have a new landlord, you have a new master, Jesus Christ.
To use another illustration that is similar and then extends the metaphor, let me again rely on an image introduced to me by Tom Wright and Martin Lloyd Jones:
Imagine that you are a small landholder living out on the countryside about 1000 years ago. Your little farm sits on the border of two great estates, and for years the lord of the manor, on whose land you live, has had you completely under his thumb. Whenever he has wanted to fight a war, or even a little local skirmish, he has called you to join up and fight on his side, and has threatened you with all kinds of things—like burning your house down if you don’t participate. He has also more than once made you get all your farm implements, tools… nice peaceful things like hoes, spades and shovels…and take them down to the blacksmith to make them into swords and spears. So you go off to fight his wars when you would really rather to be looking after the farm.
Eventually, you see an opportunity that is very attractive. You move across the river to another great estate. You build a new house, bring all your stuff across and settle down. Unfortunately, your old landlord was away at the time or he would have tried to stop you. The new landlord, who is a wonderful and noble person, gives you a warm welcome and charges you a lot less rent than the other landlord. But from time to time, your old landlord comes down and threatens to send his henchmen across the river and do all kinds of unpleasant things if you don’t return to him. But he is secretly afraid of your new landlord. You get on with your and look after your farm. You master gets you to help with the work, which is quite different from the battles which your old landlord used to drag you into. Your new landlord is building schools and hospitals, especially for poor people and sometimes asks you to bring your tools and help with the work. If someone is in special need—a death in the family, a fire, animals are sick—he asks you to help out in that way or that way. Sometimes, of course, it takes effort, but you’ve got to do it, especially for him.
This is what is involved in becoming a Christian and living life under a new master.
The old landlord will threaten you by saying, “If you don’t do this, something terrible will happen to you. Or perhaps the old landlord will say, “If you serve your new landlord, you will miss out. You won’t really live.”
But you have a new landlord, a new status and a new way to live. I used the illustration the illustration of marriage. When you get married, you make promises to someone. You have a new status as husband or wife. You may not feel very different, but you have a new status. You may not fulfill your promises perfectly, particularly at the beginning to love, honour and cherish as this is an entirely new responsibility for you, but you have a new status…you have a new call. When you become a parent for the first time, you don’t have any experience as a new parent and you may feel out of your element as a new parent, but you have a new status…you are now a parent and you are called to love and care for and discipline your child. And when you become a child of God, you have a new status…you have a new call…you have a new way of being in the world. You may not feel differently right away, but you have a new status. When you are true to that new status, you find yourself becoming a new person.
I know someone, who’s with family in their family history who have been unfaithful to their wives. When this feels that maybe he too what TIME magazine has described as the unfaithful gene, i.e. a gene that may predispose someone to commit adultery. This person, I may have been born with the capacity to commit adultery and even the desire to so with a certain kind of person, but now I that am “in Christ” I am no longer that person… I have a new identity and so I will live in a way that is consistent with that new identity… When I am tempted I will say that is no longer me…
In Romans 6:13 Paul says don’t offer the parts of your body as instruments of sin, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life…
Paul teaches, what we do also effects change in us…
Do you know of the Delancey Street Foundation in San Franscisco. It is a remarkable residence where criminals live and work together as way to prepare to re-enter society after their sentences are complete. Most of them have been labeled psychopaths. They typically move to Delancey after committing felonies and having serious problems with addiction to heroin or alcohol. They are usually the third generation of families who have known only poverty, crime and drug addiction. They have never led lawful lives or understood the values and ideals of lawful society.
After staying at Delancey for 4 years, most of the residents “graduate” and go out on their own into greater society. Nearly 60% of the people, who enter the program and make it through, sustain productive lives on the outside. Compare this to the fact only 6% of their peers who didn’t go through Delancey but through the regular prison system turn into into lawful citizens.
Part of the way they foster change is through relationships and part of the way they get inmates to change is by getting the inmates to work in businesses owned by Delancey and volunteer work.
Delancey also stresses dressing in a certain way, walking in a certain way, speaking in a certain way, and through these practices becoming new from the outside in.
As Christianity often emphasizes, change from the inside out, but, it is also true as Paul points out, when we offer the parts of our body to God rather than to wickedness, we can also encourage change from the outside in.
Richard Rohr… emphasizing this says “We don’t think our self into news ways of living, we live our selves into new ways of thinking.”
That is what we do, transforms our thinking and being…
As we act in ways that are consistent with our new status, we can become new people.
As people with a new status in Christ, we are called to live in a new way.
Those who perhaps are family and social networks where there are a very few if any Christian may at times feel out of step with the people around. As you think about your vacation, you maybe I should commit to doing a mission.
From time to time, I have been self-conscious about the fact, that as far as I know, I am the only Christian minister in our family tree. My siblings and my cousins have chosen more mainstream careers like business or education, medicine or media But a few years ago, as part of the preparations our staff members were asked to do for a retreat, I explored the roots of my family tree.
I discovered that on my dad’s side that my ancestors had been Samurai, not so much people who had been engaged in direct combat (too bad), but Samurai who would give ethical counsel to the Samurai lord. They were Confucian scholars and teachers of literature and ethics, and they gave ethical and spiritual counsel to the lord of the Samurai clan. When I thought about that, I thought what I am doing is not so foreign to who I am. I felt more at peace about my “unusual” calling.
I doing who I am… I doing something that historically consistent with my family…
It may that when you respond to the call of Christ, not necessarily to become a minister but to become a certain kind of person, you may feel out of sorts relative to your family and friends. You are making lifestyle choices that are different from what your family and the people around you have been accustomed to.
If you realize that you are acting in a way that is consistent with your new family you can be at peace…
So can a person change… through a relationship as unite to him in faith signified in our baptism, as we recognize new Spirit and a new status, we live out status we can change…
Augustine, the famous theologian from Africa, had been a sexual addict as a young man and, after giving his life to Christ, was walking down the street and ended running up into one of his old mistresses whom he had been especially attracted to.
She approached him and said, “Hello.” He said “hello” back, but didn’t really respond much further than that. She thought that he didn’t recognize her. So she pursued him and re-introduced herself and said, “Augustine! Augustine! It is I. it is I.” Augustine replied, “I know. I know, but it is not I. It is not I.” and Augustine was aware of the new status and the new Spirit that he had because of his connection with Jesus Christ.
And as we become people related to a new Saviour and embrace our new status and our new Spirit, we will become people who are new, the children of God.
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
Change or die? What if you were given that choice for real? Could you make a change when it really mattered?
According to Alan Deutschman and the experts who have done scientific studies on change, the odds are 9 to 1 against you that you would be able to make a change.
As we know medical doctors are very respected in our society, but according to research done in places like Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical Schools, 90 % of people do not follow their doctor’s counsel if it requires some kind of change in their lifestyle.
According to Dr. Edward Miller, Dean of the Medical School and Chief Executive Officer of the Hospital at Johns Hopkins University, patients with arteries that are so clogged that it hurts too much to take a long walk or to make love and who need to undergo coronary by-pass or angioplasty surgery are told if you want to stop the course of your heart disease before it kills you--you have to switch to a healthier lifestyle. You have to stop smoking, stop drinking, stop overeating, start exercising, and relieve your stress—but very few do. According to Dr. Edward Miller, “If you look at people after coronary artery by-pass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle.”
Scaring people with the “facts,” and telling them to either change or die, does not cause people to change.
According to Alan Deutschman, author of Change or Die, the only way a person can change is to have a relationship with a person or a community that inspires and sustains hope, a relationship that enables you to learn and practice and repeat a new set of habits, and a relationship to help you learn new ways of thinking about your life.
To put it succinctly, there are 3 ways to change according to Deutschman—relate, repeat, and reframe or New hope, new habits, new thinking.
As far as I know, Alan Deutschman is not a Christian, but his principles of change parallel the kinds of change a person can experience through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Someone has said all truth is God’s truth, no matter where it is found. If the principles of Christianity are true, then one would expect to find them in various sources that are not “Christian.”
Today we are going to look at a key passage of scripture that describes how change caqn occur for a person who has decided to follow Jesus Christ. If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Romans 6.
In Romans 6:1, Paul asks:
1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
In Romans 1-2 Paul describes how the human race has turned from God and therefore are separated from God—the one true source of life.
In Romans 1-3 Paul has argued that a person cannot bridge the gap between them and God, simply by trying to comply to the law of God. No-one can perfectly live out God’s law in both letter and spirit… God’s as a perfect being, requires perfection. This is why Paul says in Romans 3:20 noone will be justified in God’s sight through the law and why Paul says in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Paul says that the good news of the Gospel is this that god has provided another way for us to receive forgiveness of our sins and be restored to God.
Paul argues that if we put our faith in the faithfulness work of Jesus Christ who bore our sin and shame on the Cross, our sins can be forgiven, we can be restored to God.
There were many people in Paul’s day (and some in our own day) who object to this message that our sins can be forgiven and that they can be restored to God simply by putting their trust in what Jesus Christ has done. Those who object to this message say if you tell people they can simply be forgiven of their sins through the work of Christ, people will abuse that and they will say, “If God forgives me, why not sin?” And some of have likely thought, I’m tempted, I’ll sin and ask God to forgive me.
Or as Paul says in Romans 1 1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means!
Paul, while not backing away from the message that we can receive forgiveness of sins through the work of Jesus Christ, counters the argument that if we believe the Gospel that our sins can be forgiven by simply trusting in the work of Christ on the Cross…we can sin as we please.
Paul asks…
Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Paul says when we are baptized into Christ (which in Paul’s view was the practical beginning of the Christian life) a person dies and rises with Jesus Christ…
Some biblical scholars compare baptism to a marriage ceremony. It is common for a couple, of course, to be committed to each other before they are married.
If a couple makes a decision that they want to belong to each other for the rest of their lives, then may well decide to get married, exchange vows and weddings rings. They exchange their vows and wedding rings in the presence of God and before family and friends. Marriage becomes a kind of sign and seal for their relationship.
When I am officiating at a wedding, as some of you have likely heard me say, I will often say to the couple, “In a few minutes you will walk off this stage as husband and wife. You may not feel any different, but your lives will be different, because marriage has the power to change your lives as a whole.”
I have informally surveyed couples who have been together for some time (in some cases Christian, in some cases not Christian) and who then gotten married, and have asked the question, “Do you sense any difference in your relationship now that you are married?” In virtually case that I can recall, people have said, “We feel that our relationship is now secure now that we are married.”
Marriage is something instituted by God, so it would sense that a couple would now feel more secure as they commit themselves through the sacrament of marriage. And so it is in baptism. Though baptism, like marriage, may seem to be a simple, outward, public declaration of commitment, since it is a sacrament of God there is something very powerful about this act of obedience. Like a marriage ceremony does for a couple, baptism acts as a sign and seal of our salvation.
This is why the apostle Paul says in Romans 6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Paul looks back to his baptism and considers that the decisive point of change for him in relationship with God. And if you are here, and you know that you want to belong to God fully, and you want God to belong to you fully, and you have never made your own decision to follow Christ through the waters of baptism, I would invite to do so. I would invite you to do so, not only as an act of obedience to Christ and as way of following in his footsteps as Christ himself was baptized, but also so that more of the Spirit can be imparted to you. After Jesus was baptized, the Bible says the heavens opened and the Spirit came on him like a dove. If you want all of God and God to have all of you, and you want to have the Spirit powerfully active in your life, then follow Christ through the waters of baptism if you have never made that decision yourself.
Through following Christ and through baptism we can receive a new life and a new Spirit.
We have a new Spirit. Paul describes becoming new people (Romans 6:7-8).
I gave my life over to Christ as a teenager. Theologically, I didn’t really understand what I was doing, but I did notice that I was experiencing something inside me. I remembering going home after committing my life to Christ and searching out for a pornographic magazine that I had hidden in our garage behind some logs for the fireplace. I had bought that magazine with a good friend of mine at 7-11… we both went together. When we got I said to my friend, I’m guard the door in case your parents show, you by the magazine (here’s 2 dollars). So, it was our magazine, but I made a unilateral executive decision to burn that magazine.
I also remember going into my bedroom and taking down posters of these rock groups that I didn’t feel would honor God and in burning them too. I just had a new desire to live in a new kind of way. That was an example of what the Holy Spirit was doing in me.
What Paul is saying is that through our giving our life to Christ and our baptism in Christ we have been made new, we receive a new Spirit.
So Paul would respond say doesn’t the Gospel of Jesus that says our sins can be forgiven encourage to go on sinning and Paul would say, know because Gospel when we are united with Christ in baptism, we die to an old life, we receive a new life and new spirit that causes to want to follow the ways of God.
In verse 5 and following:
5 If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, [a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 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. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
Paul says that once you give your life over to Jesus Christ, you not only have a new relationship with a new master, Jesus Christ,but you also have a new status.
I owe the following ideas and illustrations to New Testament scholar, Tom Wright and the esteemed late British minister, Martin Lloyd Jones:
Imagine someone is renting a house from a landlord who turns out to be a bully, always demanding extra payments, coming into your house without asking, threatening you with legal action or violence of you don’t give in to his demands. You get used to doing what he says out of fear. There does not seem to be any way out, but then to your relief, you find somewhere else to live. Someone else pays off your remaining rent and you can leave.
You move out and settle into your new place, but to your horror a few days later the old landlord shows up at your door and barges into the house. He is angry and demands more money. He threatens to take you to court. The old habit returns. You are strongly tempted to pay him what he demands, just to get him to leave , but you know you are not his tenant any more. You have seen the paper work. His final bill was paid. Nothing more is owing.
Trembling, you get up and tell him to leave. He has no claim over you.
What Paul is saying in Romans 6:11 is like this. He says remember who you are, remember that you are no longer a slave of sin, you are no longer in “Adam,” but that you are in Christ and you have a new landlord, you have a new master, Jesus Christ.
To use another illustration that is similar and then extends the metaphor, let me again rely on an image introduced to me by Tom Wright and Martin Lloyd Jones:
Imagine that you are a small landholder living out on the countryside about 1000 years ago. Your little farm sits on the border of two great estates, and for years the lord of the manor, on whose land you live, has had you completely under his thumb. Whenever he has wanted to fight a war, or even a little local skirmish, he has called you to join up and fight on his side, and has threatened you with all kinds of things—like burning your house down if you don’t participate. He has also more than once made you get all your farm implements, tools… nice peaceful things like hoes, spades and shovels…and take them down to the blacksmith to make them into swords and spears. So you go off to fight his wars when you would really rather to be looking after the farm.
Eventually, you see an opportunity that is very attractive. You move across the river to another great estate. You build a new house, bring all your stuff across and settle down. Unfortunately, your old landlord was away at the time or he would have tried to stop you. The new landlord, who is a wonderful and noble person, gives you a warm welcome and charges you a lot less rent than the other landlord. But from time to time, your old landlord comes down and threatens to send his henchmen across the river and do all kinds of unpleasant things if you don’t return to him. But he is secretly afraid of your new landlord. You get on with your and look after your farm. You master gets you to help with the work, which is quite different from the battles which your old landlord used to drag you into. Your new landlord is building schools and hospitals, especially for poor people and sometimes asks you to bring your tools and help with the work. If someone is in special need—a death in the family, a fire, animals are sick—he asks you to help out in that way or that way. Sometimes, of course, it takes effort, but you’ve got to do it, especially for him.
This is what is involved in becoming a Christian and living life under a new master.
The old landlord will threaten you by saying, “If you don’t do this, something terrible will happen to you. Or perhaps the old landlord will say, “If you serve your new landlord, you will miss out. You won’t really live.”
But you have a new landlord, a new status and a new way to live. I used the illustration the illustration of marriage. When you get married, you make promises to someone. You have a new status as husband or wife. You may not feel very different, but you have a new status. You may not fulfill your promises perfectly, particularly at the beginning to love, honour and cherish as this is an entirely new responsibility for you, but you have a new status…you have a new call. When you become a parent for the first time, you don’t have any experience as a new parent and you may feel out of your element as a new parent, but you have a new status…you are now a parent and you are called to love and care for and discipline your child. And when you become a child of God, you have a new status…you have a new call…you have a new way of being in the world. You may not feel differently right away, but you have a new status. When you are true to that new status, you find yourself becoming a new person.
I know someone, who’s with family in their family history who have been unfaithful to their wives. When this feels that maybe he too what TIME magazine has described as the unfaithful gene, i.e. a gene that may predispose someone to commit adultery. This person, I may have been born with the capacity to commit adultery and even the desire to so with a certain kind of person, but now I that am “in Christ” I am no longer that person… I have a new identity and so I will live in a way that is consistent with that new identity… When I am tempted I will say that is no longer me…
In Romans 6:13 Paul says don’t offer the parts of your body as instruments of sin, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life…
Paul teaches, what we do also effects change in us…
Do you know of the Delancey Street Foundation in San Franscisco. It is a remarkable residence where criminals live and work together as way to prepare to re-enter society after their sentences are complete. Most of them have been labeled psychopaths. They typically move to Delancey after committing felonies and having serious problems with addiction to heroin or alcohol. They are usually the third generation of families who have known only poverty, crime and drug addiction. They have never led lawful lives or understood the values and ideals of lawful society.
After staying at Delancey for 4 years, most of the residents “graduate” and go out on their own into greater society. Nearly 60% of the people, who enter the program and make it through, sustain productive lives on the outside. Compare this to the fact only 6% of their peers who didn’t go through Delancey but through the regular prison system turn into into lawful citizens.
Part of the way they foster change is through relationships and part of the way they get inmates to change is by getting the inmates to work in businesses owned by Delancey and volunteer work.
Delancey also stresses dressing in a certain way, walking in a certain way, speaking in a certain way, and through these practices becoming new from the outside in.
As Christianity often emphasizes, change from the inside out, but, it is also true as Paul points out, when we offer the parts of our body to God rather than to wickedness, we can also encourage change from the outside in.
Richard Rohr… emphasizing this says “We don’t think our self into news ways of living, we live our selves into new ways of thinking.”
That is what we do, transforms our thinking and being…
As we act in ways that are consistent with our new status, we can become new people.
As people with a new status in Christ, we are called to live in a new way.
Those who perhaps are family and social networks where there are a very few if any Christian may at times feel out of step with the people around. As you think about your vacation, you maybe I should commit to doing a mission.
From time to time, I have been self-conscious about the fact, that as far as I know, I am the only Christian minister in our family tree. My siblings and my cousins have chosen more mainstream careers like business or education, medicine or media But a few years ago, as part of the preparations our staff members were asked to do for a retreat, I explored the roots of my family tree.
I discovered that on my dad’s side that my ancestors had been Samurai, not so much people who had been engaged in direct combat (too bad), but Samurai who would give ethical counsel to the Samurai lord. They were Confucian scholars and teachers of literature and ethics, and they gave ethical and spiritual counsel to the lord of the Samurai clan. When I thought about that, I thought what I am doing is not so foreign to who I am. I felt more at peace about my “unusual” calling.
I doing who I am… I doing something that historically consistent with my family…
It may that when you respond to the call of Christ, not necessarily to become a minister but to become a certain kind of person, you may feel out of sorts relative to your family and friends. You are making lifestyle choices that are different from what your family and the people around you have been accustomed to.
If you realize that you are acting in a way that is consistent with your new family you can be at peace…
So can a person change… through a relationship as unite to him in faith signified in our baptism, as we recognize new Spirit and a new status, we live out status we can change…
Augustine, the famous theologian from Africa, had been a sexual addict as a young man and, after giving his life to Christ, was walking down the street and ended running up into one of his old mistresses whom he had been especially attracted to.
She approached him and said, “Hello.” He said “hello” back, but didn’t really respond much further than that. She thought that he didn’t recognize her. So she pursued him and re-introduced herself and said, “Augustine! Augustine! It is I. it is I.” Augustine replied, “I know. I know, but it is not I. It is not I.” and Augustine was aware of the new status and the new Spirit that he had because of his connection with Jesus Christ.
And as we become people related to a new Saviour and embrace our new status and our new Spirit, we will become people who are new, the children of God.
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
posted by Shigematsu at 12:41 PM
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