Baptized Into Christ

The sermon text for today is Romans chapter 6, verses 1 through 14.

Romans 6:1–14

You can find this passage in the Blue Pew Bible on page 17, 14.

Listen as I read God's word.

What shall we say then?

Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?

By no means.

We are those who have died to sin.

How can we live in it any longer?

Or don't you know that all of us who have were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

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.

For 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.

For we know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin, because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again.

Death no longer has mastery over him.

The death he died, he died to sin once for all.

But the life he lives, he lives to God.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.

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.

For sin shall no longer be your master because you are not under the law, but under grace.

Here ends the reading.

My name is John.

If I've not yet had the chance to meet you, I get to serve as the lead pastor here at Elmwood.

And uh if you are our guest today, whether you just found us online somehow or whether someone from Elmwood invited you, uh, we just want you to know how grateful we are that we can be together with you here today.

Also, if you are newer to Elmwood, uh, I want to tell you about something that's coming up in just a few weeks that is uh specifically for you.

So coming up on Sunday, October 5th, is our next welcome party.

And this is gonna be right after the service, right back there in the fireside room.

It's gonna be like 20 minutes long, it's gonna be short, there's going to be cupcakes, and it's gonna be a chance mainly for you, if you're newer, to connect with other people who are newer to Elmwood.

And also to meet some of our staff and some of our ministry leaders and uh to learn about some next steps, some ways to get connected, to find uh places to belong and grow and serve.

And so if you are newer to Elmwood, even in the last six months-ish, and you have never yet been to one of these welcome parties, uh, please join us for that.

Uh, Sunday, October 5th.

If you would be so kind as to RSVP, that would be really helpful for us so we know how much stuff to get.

Uh, you can do that through the digital bulletin that you see here.

Just click the link that says uh welcome party, and uh, we'd love to have you join us for that.

Uh this fall we have been in a series of messages where we have been uh looking at questions that you have submitted.

The series is titled Asking for a Friend, and we've been answering, trying to sort of think about and explore questions that you've submitted that either you have or someone in your sphere of influence has about God or faith or the Bible.

And today we're taking a break from that series.

That's gonna resume next week.

So I want to invite you back for that as we continue to uh just press into what it means to be the kind of church that uh is is okay stepping into uncomfortable, difficult things that might be hard to talk about.

Uh we want to be that kind of church, and so we invite you to join us uh as that series resumes next week.

Uh but because we're doing baptism this morning, I thought this would be an appropriate time for us to just spend a few moments exploring what is baptism in the first place.

What does baptism represent?

Why do we ask people to share their stories of faith in Jesus and then cheer while they get wet?

In front of their church community and their friends and their family.

Why do we do that?

What's baptism all about?

Well, to get at that question, I want to spend a few moments uh looking at these verses that you heard read from the book of Romans.

This is a letter that a man named Paul wrote to a system of church communities in the city of ancient Rome.

And as we as you heard this read a few moments ago, you may have noticed that Paul really uh gets into the heart of what baptism is.

Now, because chapter six begins with this question, the question is, shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?

That question doesn't make a whole lot of sense if we don't know what came before this in chapters one through five.

So the place I want to begin today is by just doing a sort of super high-level overview of Romans 1 to 5 so that we make sure we're not taking what Paul says here out of its context.

So, in the opening verses of Romans, the opening chapters, rather, Paul has been making the case that all people stand guilty before God.

Now, I would venture to guess that when most of us hear that, what we think Paul is saying is basically, you've all broken the rules.

You've all done bad things that you shouldn't have done, tisk, tisk.

God is angry with you because you have done lots of bad things.

Now, certainly, that's an aspect of what sin is, is breaking the rules.

But here in Romans and throughout the rest of the Bible, we see that sin is not just a matter of external behavior.

Sin is actually first a matter of the heart.

In other words, the essence of sin is not just that we have done bad things.

The essence of sin is that we love the gifts more than we love the giver.

The essence of sin is that we prize the creation more than we prize the creator.

We look to created things, whether it's people or material resources or experiences, all sorts of good things that God has given us, when we look to those things to provide for us what only God has said he can provide for us, that's what the Bible calls sin.

It's what the Bible calls idolatry.

And what Paul has been saying is that because of our sin, we stand both legally guilty and relationally estranged from our Creator.

That's the bad news.

But Paul didn't write this letter to the churches in Rome to just pile on a bunch of bad news.

No, he wrote this letter to tell them the good news about what God has done for them in Jesus.

And so what he says in these opening chapters is that in Christ, God has made a way for our sin to be forgiven, which means that legally speaking, we are given a new status.

We are declared not guilty before God.

But even more than this, through Jesus we have been relationally reconciled to God as well.

He says, we now have peace with God through what Jesus has done for us.

This is the staggering message of the book of Romans.

The staggering message that Paul communicates here is that forgiveness from God and reconciliation to God our Creator are available to us through nothing more than simple faith.

Not spiritual achievement, not performance, not socioeconomic status, not age or gender or background or any of that stuff.

We are united to Christ and reconciled to God through nothing more than faith.

And this is the message that Paul has been just reveling in in these first five chapters of Romans.

And now, at the beginning of chapter six, where we come today, he anticipates a question in the minds of his readers.

And the question is well, if God is so gracious, should we go on sinning so that God's grace can increase?

In other words, if being forgiven by God displays his grace and goodness, shouldn't we create more opportunities to be forgiven by God by continuing to sin?

In other words, if our failures magnify his faithfulness, shouldn't we sin as much as possible?

So that God can be shown over and over and over and over again to be more faithful and more merciful?

Yeeha, someone says.

He says we cannot go on sinning, we cannot continue to live in this old way of life, and the reason that he gives is twofold.

Two reasons why we cannot continue to live in our old way of life.

The first reason, Paul says, is this He says, our lives have been joined to Christ.

Caleb, can you put that up there for me, please?

Our lives have been joined to Christ.

Listen to what he says that's scattered all throughout verses three to seven.

He says, Don't you know that all of us who are baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

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, so too we may live a new life.

For if we had been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.

For we know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.

What he says here is remarkable.

He says, We have been buried with Christ.

He says, We have been raised with Christ to new life.

We have been united to Christ in his death.

We have been united to Christ in his resurrection.

He says, Our old self was crucified.

And what's remarkable about this is that Paul is writing to people in those early church communities, and as we hear this as well, he's writing to people who were not physically executed alongside of Jesus.

The point that he's getting at is this.

What he's saying is that through Christ we have been united.

Through the cross, we have been united to Christ.

Through faith, we are united to Jesus, and we are now so closely united to him, and our lives are so closely joined together that he can say, When Jesus died, you died with him.

When Jesus rose from the dead, you rose with him, you rose in him.

We're now so closely united to Jesus that he can say, his righteousness, his right standing before God belongs to you.

His victory over the dead over the grave belongs to you.

Every single good thing that belongs to Jesus now belongs to us.

That's a lot of good things.

Every good thing that belongs to Jesus now belongs to us because we have been united to him through faith.

And so Paul says, we cannot go on sinning.

We cannot go on living in our old way of life because we have been joined to, we have been united to the sinless one.

And when we are given new life in him, we are not just given a new status, although we are given a new status.

When we are united to him, we're also given a new heart.

And what that means is that if you have truly been united to him, if your life is now joined with his, you will begin to love the things that he loves.

You will begin to want the things that he wants.

And so this is why for Paul it's nonsense that a person would say, I'm united to Christ, and there's also some value in continuing in a life of sin.

Paul's like, that doesn't make any sense.

There is no value, there is no good that can come from us following that old way of life.

So we cannot go on living that way because we have been joined to Christ.

The second reason he gives why we can't continue to live that way is that we are no longer slaves to sin.

Our lives have been joined to Christ.

We are no longer slaves to sin.

He says in verse 2 that we have died to sin.

In verse 6, he says that our old self was crucified with him in order that we would no longer be slaves to sin.

Then later in verse 14, he says that sin is no longer our master.

Sin is no longer our Lord, it no longer has control over us.

And what Paul's describing here is he's describing a transfer of ownership.

He's saying, you no longer belong to sin and to death, you now belong to God.

And this transfer of ownership that Paul is describing here, he doesn't just pull this out of thin air.

No, this a transfer of ownership is at the heart of the story of the Exodus, which in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, which is the Bible for Paul and his listeners, the Exodus is the climactic, decisive moment of God's deliverance and salvation for his people.

And at the heart of that is a transfer of ownership.

If you uh were to rewind the tape and read the book of Exodus, you would see that God's people are enslaved in Egypt under the mastery of Pharaoh.

And then when God miraculously led them out of slavery in Egypt, he didn't lead them out so that they could aimlessly wander the desert by themselves.

He brought them out of slavery in Egypt underneath the ownership of Pharaoh so that they could come under his gracious and life-giving ownership.

What's described in the Exodus is a transfer of ownership through the Exodus.

The people no longer belong to Pharaoh, the people belong to God.

They now belong to their creator.

And an even greater kind of transfer of ownership, an even greater kind of exodus, takes place at the cross.

And that's really what's at the center of what Paul is saying here when he talks about you're no longer enslaved to sin.

It's no longer your master.

It doesn't have any sway over you anymore.

You used to be ruled by sin, he says.

You used to be mastered by it, with no way to escape its death-inducing grip over you.

That's what used to be true of you.

But he says, because of what Jesus has done for you, sin's power over you has been broken.

Now, this does not mean Paul's not saying that we will no longer be tempted to sin or that we will never again give in to sin.

Anyone who's followed Jesus for more than eight seconds knows that to be true, don't we?

He's not saying that sin has lost its influence in our lives.

Like when we trust Jesus, we have this sort of uh spiritual Teflon effect where all the sin and temptation is just like it just slides right off.

It can't stick.

That's not what he's saying.

He's not saying that we are now immune to the influence of sin.

He's saying that sin has lost its power over us, it's lost its mastery over us.

We are no longer held hostage to sin and to death and to its consequences in our lives because of what Jesus has done.

In him, our lives have been joined to Christ and we are no longer slaves to sin.

If you are here today and you trust Jesus by faith, both of those things are now true for you.

If you're here today and you trust Jesus by faith, your life has been joined to his.

Your life has been united to Christ, which means every good thing that belongs to Jesus now belongs to you.

And of course, we experience that in part now as we receive the goodness and the blessings of God that come in so many different forms.

But we will one day fully experience that in new creation when he returns to make all things new.

If you are in Christ, your life has been joined to his, and you are no longer enslaved to sin.

The power that sin once had over you and over your life has been once and for all broken and shattered.

The outward physical act of baptism shines a spotlight on these inner spiritual realities.

We have two people being baptized today, both of whom are declaring to you and to the watching world that they have died with Christ.

They are declaring to the world and to you that they have been raised with Christ.

So not only will they go under the water, representing their union with Jesus in his death, they will also come out of the water.

I promise they will.

They will come out of the water, representing that they have been raised with Christ.

Just as he was raised from the dead, so too they have also been raised with him.

Through baptism, they are declaring that their lives have been joined to his, that they have been set free from the power of sin, and that they are choosing now to follow the way of Jesus.

In just a moment, we're gonna get to hear their stories, hear stories from Natalie and Mary.

But before we get there, I want to offer just a few different ways each of us can respond.

Okay, because this baptism thing that we experience today is not just about them, it's not just for them, it is for all of us.

And so let me invite you to respond in these two ways.

Number one, receive his grace for you.

The cross is the place where God's grace and his love are most clearly visible, where his grace and love are most clearly seen.

The cross it shows us how deeply God cares about justice.

It shows us how deeply grieved and pained God is over.

Our sin and over our idolatry and over the ways that we have rebelled against him and replaced him in our lives with the good gifts that he's given us.

But the cross also shows us the inexhaustible and the unfathomable depths of his love for us.

It shows us the links to which God was willing to go to rescue us.

There's nothing that reveals the heart of God more clearly than the cross.

And so the point is this the grace and the love that God has put on display at the cross are for you.

They're not just for people out there in the world.

It's not just for the world broadly, although that is certainly true.

The grace and the love and the compassion and the mercy of God that was poured out and displayed at the cross are for you personally.

Have you received his grace?

Do you know the God who created you and who loves you?

Do you know the one who sent his son to suffer unimaginable agony so that you could be forgiven?

Do you know the one who was willing to lay down his life so that you could live?

Has that message of what Jesus has done, has it warmed your heart?

Has it stirred your affections?

Has it led you to being broken over the sin and the corruption that's in your own life and heart?

And has it led you to be confounded and overwhelmed with amazement at God's grace and his mercy and his forgiveness for you?

Have you received his grace for you?

Now there's some of you here today who have lost count of the number of times that you have received and just basked in the grace and the love of God that was poured out for you.

And for some of you, today might be the day that you do that for the first time.

And friends, can I just tell you, like, this isn't rocket science?

What it takes to come to know Jesus and to experience new life in him is, number one, is an acknowledgement that you need him.

An acknowledgement that you need to turn from your old way of life or your current way of life, that you need his mercy and his grace and his forgiveness.

That's where it starts, is an acknowledgement of that.

And then, secondly, is a commitment to surrender your life to him and to follow the way of Jesus.

Now, certainly, as you grow and mature in him, there's certainly more to it than that.

But at its core, what it means to come to know Jesus is just fundamentally simple.

And if you've never made that decision, I want to invite you to make today the day that your life is joined to his.

Make this the day that sin loses its power over you.

Receive his grace for you today.

The second way we can respond to this very briefly is offer yourselves to him.

Receive his grace for you, offer yourselves to him.

When we receive God's grace, the right response is not sin more.

Paul makes that very clear.

The right response is actually found in verse 11, where he says, Count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Then in verse 13, he says, Don't 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.

So he says here, offer every part of who you are to him.

Offer every part of yourself to God for his purposes and as an act of worship for him.

The reason we give ourselves to him is because he gave himself for us.

And as a joyful response to the grace and the mercy that he has poured out on us, we offer every part of ourselves to him.

We count ourselves, we consider ourselves dead to sin.

So, friends, receive his grace for you today.

Offer yourselves to him as a response of love and worship.

Would you bow with me in prayer?

God, thank you for the unimaginable gift that you have given us.

Thank you, God, that through nothing more than faith we can come to know you and experience new life in you.

God, would you form us into people who are more and more every day aware of your grace for us?

And would you form us into people who more and more every day offer all of ourselves, all of our lives to you in worship?

Thank you, God, for these stories of life change and transformation.

Thank you for these stories that we get to celebrate in a moment.

God, we pray that you would increase the number of people who come to know and follow Jesus.

We would be delighted to be a part of that, God.

And so we ask you in faith and trust asking you to let us be a part of seeing people who are spiritually dead come to life.

We love you, Jesus.

And we pray these things in your name.

Amen.

Here at Elmwood, we value the next generation, and so you will see right now all of our three through second graders who are going to return to the sanctuary to uh be with their parents and caretakers as we come to the communion table.

And all this noise and disruption that comes with that is a beautiful thing.

Both of those who are being baptized today have prepared statements about their faith in Christ and why they are choosing to obey Him today.

And those videos are going to appear on the screen in just a few moments.

And then one by one, they're going to come forward and step into the baptismal tank.

And when they are sitting in the water, I'm going to ask them two questions.

The first question is, are you now trusting in Jesus alone for the forgiveness of your sins and for the fulfillment of all his promises to you, including eternal life?

And I will ask, Do you intend by faith to follow Jesus as Lord and obey all his teachings?

After they answer yes to both of these questions, they will go under the water and be raised up out of the water, symbolizing that they have died with Christ and have been raised to new life in him.

When they come up out of the water, they will, hear me?

They will be greeted with lots of loud cheering and clapping and celebration as we marvel at the miracle that God has done in their lives.

Let me direct your attention to the screen so that we can hear their stories now.

Hi, I'm Natalie, and this is my story of my faith in Jesus Christ.

The first time I remember repenting for doing something wrong was when I was three and I'd lied to my mom.

It was probably something silly, like eating an extra popsicle or forgetting to brush my teeth.

Anyway, I told my dad, thinking he wouldn't tell my mom, and he informed me that when we lie, it's disrespectful and it doesn't show love.

And he told me that I had to tell my mom that I had lied.

I was terrified and I didn't want to.

But then my dad told me how to ask God for forgiveness.

So I did, and as soon as I did, I remember feeling the weight of shame flee my body, and it gave me the confidence to ask my mom for forgiveness too.

When I was eight, my grandma and I were talking about Jesus, and she said that when she was five, she made the decision to give her life to Jesus.

She said it was the best decision she ever made.

The best decision sounded like a great decision to me.

So that night in my bed, I told Jesus that I wanted to dedicate my life to him and asked him to work through me in my life.

I can't remember a time when I didn't feel the presence of Jesus.

I always believed in him and he's always been there for me.

For those of you who know me and know my story, you're aware of how difficult it is for me to trust and the reasons behind that.

However, throughout all the chaos in my life, Jesus was always there for me, a shoulder to cry on, a person who would listen when it seemed no one else cared, and a warm wave of unfathomable peace to eradicate numerous panic attacks.

God has always provided a roof over my head, a warm meal in my belly, and parents and grandparents who love me.

And while I'm getting better at the whole trusting God's future thing, I know that I can trust him.

And I know that I made the right decision almost ten years ago to give my life to Jesus.

In Deuteronomy 31:6, when the Israelites were in the desert outside of the promised land and they were afraid of the threat of the Canaanites, the Lord reminded them, So be strong and courageous.

Deuteronomy 31:6

Do not be afraid, and do not panic before them, for the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you.

He will neither fail you nor abandon you.

And this is my favorite verse because it perfectly illustrates how God has been with me in my life.

Like everyone, I'm not perfect, and I still sin and make mistakes.

But after recognizing that Jesus paid the price from all my past, present, and future sins already, I know that I don't have to rely on myself to be made right with God.

I'm saved because of what Jesus has done for me.

And I know that I don't have to carry the weight of things Jesus has already forgiven me for.

I'm thankful for what God has done in my life, and I want to try my best to listen and obey God's word in every aspect of my life.

That is why I'm getting baptized today.

My name is Mary, and this is part of my story of faith in Jesus.

I was baptized as an infant and I grew up doing lots of religious things, like saying grace before meals and prayers before bed.

And even though my family rarely went to church, I was taught the Ten Commandments and believed that if I obeyed them, I could go to heaven when I died.

At 20 years old, I received the Holy Spirit through prayer, but I sorely grieved him.

I battled with sinful thoughts and actions while wrestling with my insecurities and wounds and disappointments.

I caused others to sin and I hurt the ones that I loved.

I carried a weight of self-condemnation, guilt, and shame.

I was uncommitted and disobedient to my God.

In all this, the Holy Spirit was convicting me of my sin.

And God was patient with me.

By 34 years old, I was remarried with two little girls and a toddler.

And life wasn't going the way that I expected it or wanted it to.

I was frustrated and dissatisfied.

And I didn't want to give into my sinful patterns and go down the path that would lead me away from God again.

I knew that I had to give up my will and totally surrender my life to Christ.

I needed to put my faith and trust in him, believing that he truly loved me and could heal and change the desires of my heart.

I knew that following his way would be better than following my own.

And I'm so thankful that he didn't give up on me.

By his grace and love, he led me to repentance.

He assured me that my sins were forgiven because of the sacrifice of his son Jesus for me.

I still fall short and I'm still a work in progress.

But over the years, he's been changing the desires of my heart.

And he has given me strength when I felt weak and peace through the troubles.

I've also had opportunities to serve in various ways, which has given me connection and joy.

Jesus is my Lord and Savior, and I want it known that I belong to Him.

I want to be baptized in His name by my own admission as an adult.

Following Jesus to me looks like faith, commitment, and walking in love.