Time for a little TV trivia! Name the TV show from which this theme song is taken (music from “Adams Family” is played). Did you ever watch that show? Right—it’s The Addams Family! Gomez, Morticia, Lurch . . . Cousin Itt . . . and there was one character in particular that was always good for a laugh, Thing.
What was Thing, do you remember? ____________ Yeah . . . a disembodied hand. He’d show up out of nowhere, popping up out of the mailbox or on a table, handing Gomez an envelope or something like that.
The funny thing about Thing was that he was just a hand. No arm, no elbow . . . just a hand. I always thought it would be cool to have Thing around. He could take dictation for you when you wrote a letter, he could dial the phone for you. You could ask him how many scoops of ice cream you should get (“one or two? Two? Okay!”). I’m sure the backrubs would be great.
But see, the problem with that is that it could never really happen. There is no way a hand that was separated from the body could live on its own. It couldn’t think or communicate. It would have no way of getting bloodflow. It couldn’t perform any action that would benefit anybody. The fact of the matter is that when a hand is severed from the body it dies . . . and the rest of the body suffers.
Last week we emphasized the unity of the church, which Scripture calls the Body of Christ. With Christ as her head, the Body lives, acts, find purpose and direction. The Body acts as one complete organism.
And though we’re not going to leave behind that teaching, this week we’re need to emphasize something a bit different. This week we’re emphasizing the diversity of the Body. Paul rounds off his emphasis on the unity of the Body in our epistle reading from 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, saying this, “12 The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body-- whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free-- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.” But then he takes that metaphor of the body and says, “14 Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.”
God designed our physical bodies to be an intricate working of divergent parts. I think its safe to say that no one individual body part completely duplicates the purpose or functions of another. God has given us unique body parts that perform specific functions: the heart, the lungs, the digestive system. Some parts serve multiple functions: the mouth serves us for communication as well as a place to take in food. Where would we be without our hands, our feet, even our reproductive organs? They all serve a purpose in the body, and they are all unique.
Where would we be without each member of the Body? We couldn’t function! Each part performs a much-needed function, each part relies upon each other. And yet isn’t it weird that when it comes to church we try to act like we’re Thing? As though we could live on our own, detached from the rest of the Body of Christ, and no one would be any the wiser. But that’s not what Paul says. Paul says that each member of the Body of Christ also performs unique, specific functions. In this very church we have hands that do work, we have feet that carry us along, we have a mouth that speaks the words of God. You are the Body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
And there’s still this problem of the Lone Ranger Christian—the Christian who wants to go it alone, to be self-sufficient, to be detached from the Body. Gregory Lockwood, in his commentary on 1 Corinthians, shows that Paul suggests two reasons why we think we should be on our own: feeling inferior and feeling superior.
Sometimes we feel inferior to other church members. Sometimes we see someone else getting all the glory and get jealous, feeling like we’re nothing compared to them. Sometimes we look at how well someone else does a particular job in the church and we think, “I could never do that. I guess there’s just not a place for me here.” Maybe you even have thought, “I’m too old/I’m too young.”
Let’s expose that for the lie it is. You are the Body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. You don’t have to be at the forefront of visible ministry to make a significant impact on the life of the church. Okay, so maybe you’re not the best public speaker in the congregation . . . but can you bake cookies? Maybe you’re not the best singer in the world . . . but can you pick up the phone and call somebody who’s hurting? You say you can’t teach a Bible class, but could you open up your home and let a small group meet there?
I see this all the time, and I tell you I am sick of it! All the time I see people believing they’re inferior, “I can’t speak, I can’t teach, I can’t give . . .” It’s as though somehow Satan has so deceived us into believing that if we’re not exactly like another part of the Body, if we don’t have the exact same talents and gifts and abilities then we’re somehow second-class church citizens.
Now to show how destructive this line of thinking is, just imagine what would happen if Paul’s words were reality. What if your feet had an inferiority complex and said, 1 Corinthians 12:15, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body”? That would be ridiculous, right? Your feet woke up one day and decided they wanted to peel a banana! “Here, have a little toejam with your fruit today!” What would happen if my feet decided they wanted to gently stroke my wife’s hair? I’d get kicked out of bed real quick, I can tell you that!
1 Corinthians 12:17, “17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?” Imagine that! Just one big ol’ eye, rolling around. Can’t do anything but see—can’t breathe, can’t hear . . . nothing. Just . . . see. Or one HUUUUGE ear . . . oh yeah, that’d be attractive. The chicks would just flock to you in school, wouldn’t they? It’s ridiculous! But not only is it ridiculous, it’s also harmful, because of what the body would be missing out on by everyone being exactly alike. If we all performed the same exact functions in the body, we’d accomplish absolutely nothing as a church.
1 Corinthians 12:18, “8 But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” You are the Body of Christ, and God has placed each of you exactly where He wants you to be. To serve. To support. To enable others in their ministry. The Body cannot live without your unique, special contribution. Your role—no matter how big or how seemingly small—your role is vital to the whole Body. The Body cannot function without each and every one of you.
Separating yourself from the Body because you feel inferior is bad. It’s bad for you, and it’s bad for the rest of the Body. But the other end of the spectrum is just as harmful. Separating yourself from the Body because you feel superior to others also damages both you and the Body.
Now I’ll tell you straight out, I haven’t seen this a lot around here, and for that I’m thankful. But I have seen it in other churches. What’s more, I know that where people are, there is always the potential for something like this. So we’re going to talk about it a bit.
1 Corinthians 12:21, “21 The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!"” Now that should be fairly obvious. It’s just ludicrous to think that the head feels itself SO important that it would no longer need feet to carry it—and the rest of the body—around.
I remember a story another pastor told me some time ago. It seems that one person in this pastor’s congregation got his nose bent out of shape by something in the church. Really what happened was is that he got his pride hurt. And so he told the pastor that if he couldn’t have his way, he was going to take himself, his family, and his offerings to some other church.
Now, there was no doubt that this man was a high-dollar giver. But what had happened is that he had allowed himself to believe that he and his money were so important to the church that he could call the shots. He had allowed himself to believe that he—alone among all the other members of the congregation—was so important to the life of the church that he could dictate what happened in that church.
Now obviously that’s dead wrong—there is only One person whom the church cannot live without, and none of us are Him. When I begin to believe that I’m the most important one in the church, when I have to be the one that calls the shots, when I’m the one who should decide what’s going on, I am telling Christ, “Lord, the church doesn’t need you . . . it needs me. Thanks a lot, but I’ll handle it from here.”
When we pull the church’s focus off of Christ and try to put it on ourselves, we are in effect telling everybody else, “I’m important, you’re expendable.” But Paul says, “22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.” No matter how important you think you are, you still need the contribution of every other one of us to function as the Body of Christ. We all need each other, the Body must have every member functioning and treated with proper respect if it is to accomplish anything at all.
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. Christ’s death grants us each the forgiveness of sin. His resurrection causes us each to live in a new life. Every single one of us, from the youngest to the oldest, from the weakest to the strongest, is so important to Jesus Christ that He was willing to die so that we may be part of His Body. We’re that important to Him.
But just as important to Him as our individual salvation is our life together as the Body of Christ. He didn’t save us so that we could try to run things on our own, but He saved us from sin and death and placed us into the community of believers so that we can support one another, comfort one another, and love one another even as we receive His love, comfort and support. This is what we are saved to. You are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
I suppose that Thing is going to continue to be funny. There is something amusing about a disembodied hand running around everywhere. But that’s no way to run a church. Christ loved us so much that He made us part of His Body
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Body/Building: It All Starts With the Head
I love my wife. She is such a great treasure to me. Every day when I wake up, she’s there with me. Every night when I go to bed, she’s there with me. I want her by my side for the rest of my life, and I’m working to make sure she will be.
I love my wife, so I want to see her achieve everything she can. When I give her gifts, sometimes it’s just because I love her. Other times it’s because she needs something to accomplish her daily tasks and life’s goals. I’m willing to lay down my life for her, and I give what I have to her so that she knows that I love her and want her to grow in her love for me.
There are a number of reasons I love her—her beauty, her pure heart—but one thing that makes me crazy in love with her is knowing that she only has one husband. I love knowing that there’s only one man she turns to for her needs. There’s only one man she confides her deepest hopes and fears in. There’s only one man whom she trusts completely to be by her side forever.
Now, I could go on telling you about my love for my wife for quite some time, but I don’t want to monopolize your entire afternoon and, frankly, you’d probably get tired of hearing me gush about my wife after the first hour or so. And of course I’m not here to do that. But I am here to talk about something important to our lives as God’s church, and the easiest way to help us understand what we’re going to talk about is by comparing something we know—a man’s great, great love for his wife—with something that we may not fully understand: Christ’s love for His church.
The Bible tells us the way Christ loves His church is much like the way a man loves his wife. He treasures His church. He died for His church and lives with His church. He gives gifts to His church so that it may succeed. His church trusts only in Him, confides only in Him, and He alone is the loving Head of His church.
Over the next few weeks we’re going to be in a sermon series called Body/Building. It’s kind of an interesting title: We have two words that are synonymous with the word “church”: “body” and “building.” Both words describe Christ’s Church. But if you say them together—“ bodybuilding”—we have a word that describes the process of making a body stronger and healthier through discipline and exercise.
It was last year about this time that we spent forty days studying and discussing God’s five purposes for His church, remember? What we talked about then were the five things that made a healthy, Bible-based church: worship, fellowship, discipleship, mission, and ministry. Those are all things the church does.
But what I want to do with this sermon series is explore the relationship between Christ and His Church. We’ll talk about how He equips His church to accomplish her tasks and goal. We’ll talk about how the Church is guided by love. We’ll talk about how the church chooses methods that get desired results. And we’ll talk about one of the central objects of the Church’s faith: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But for today there’s just one thing that we are going to focus on: Christ as the head of His Church.
Ephesians 1:22-23 says, “22 God placed all things under his—that’s Christ’s—under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
That verse says a few important things. First, Christ reigns supreme over everything. He has absolute, final authority in all of creation. Christ reigns supreme in Heaven. He reigns supreme over the angels. He reigns supreme over the world. He is truly the King of kings and the Lord of lords. His word is final. His rule is absolute. The governments of the earth are subject to Him. The surgeon’s hand, a mother’s child . . . there is nothing that is not under Him.
But as true as that is, that verse also tells us that Christ was given a special relationship to His church. Yes, He is the supreme ruler over all, but He alone is the head of his church. Now, a head is intimately connected to the body. The head dictates where the body goes, what it does. We know that the head controls all of the body’s functions. Whether voluntary or automatic, every muscle that moves, every function that the body performs, is controlled by the head. It doesn’t stretch the point too much to say that the head defines the life of the body.
What would the body be without the head? It couldn’t survive. When we apply that terminology to Christ and His church, we must remember that this remains true. This isn’t just idle speculation, it’s not just a nice metaphor. Christ isn’t just the figure-head of the church, some sort of titular leader that guides us, but He is the very one who gives the Church life and breath. He alone is the One who gives the Church direction. He alone is the One who defines the life of the Church.
Now wait a minute . . . didn’t we just hear in the epistle reading where it’s the Holy Spirit that gives gifts to the Church? So how can I say that Christ alone defines the life of the Church? Am I just overstating my point, or does God Himself, in every member of the Trinity, point the Church to Christ?
No, I’m not overstating this. Even if we look to our God, every member of the Trinity points us to Christ. The Father speaks from a cloud in Matthew 17:5 and says, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” The Father points us to Christ. Jesus Christ Himself says that He has come so that we might be with the Father, but to get there? He points to Himself. John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” The Son points us to Christ. And the job of the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus in John 14:26, is to “teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” The Holy Spirit points us to Christ.
Our very relationship with God, with each member of the Trinity, points us to Jesus Christ as our head. Christ defines the life of the Church.
Christ defines the life of the Church. Think about that for a minute or two. Our church-year calendar . . . that revolves around the life of Christ, so He shapes our lives of worship. The whole of our Scriptures point solely to Christ: the Old Testament points forward to Him, the New Testament focuses us on His work 2000 years ago even as it draws us into His work today. Our hymns and praise songs focus our attention on Christ. Even our traditional church furniture, from the altar to the pulpit to the Paschal candle . . . they all in some way focus us on Christ . . . His work . . . His person . . . Himself. Because He alone is the head of the Church.
Bodybuilding . . . the process of making a body stronger and healthier through discipline and exercise . . . it all starts with the head. This is Paul’s point from the epistle lesson. Paul is about to launch into several chapters that detail how the Body of Christ—the church—works together as one to accomplish the things of God. He’s going to tell us how to work together, but first he focuses our attention on the rightful head of the church: Christ Himself. No one can say, “Jesus is Lord”—that is to say, “Jesus is the head”—except by the workings of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit whose job it is to point us to Christ.
From there Paul jumps into a listing of seemingly different things, but notice that his focus isn’t on diversity, but on unity. 1 Corinthians 12:4-6: “4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.”
We are united as one body, with one head. One Lord Jesus Christ whom we all worship and serve. And though it is true that we are a diverse bunch, each with different tasks—and to a certain extent we’ll talk about that next week—Paul’s overall thrust in this passage is our unity. 1 Corinthians 12:8-11, “8 To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit . . .”
Every task, every role in the church, they are all there to serve one purpose, and that is to point to Jesus Christ. That means that the Church pulls together towards one goal, in one direction. It’s against our nature to pull against each other, to each serve our own agendas, because we are united as one. It doesn’t matter what I say, what he thinks, what she feels, what you do, what matters is what Christ says, what He does . . . and where He leads.
If all this is true—if Christ alone truly is the head of the church, the head of Our Saviour Lutheran Church—then what is our primary responsibility as His church? To follow Him. To go where He goes. To do as He does. To do as He says. To truly be His body.
Now, we have a lot more to talk about in the coming weeks. We’re not even ¼ of the way on knowing what it means to be the Body of Christ. So stick with me; good things are coming! But as we finish today, even though we don’t yet know all the things we need to know about being Christ’s body, we do know the most important thing: Christ is the Head of His church. And it all starts with the head.
I love my wife, so I want to see her achieve everything she can. When I give her gifts, sometimes it’s just because I love her. Other times it’s because she needs something to accomplish her daily tasks and life’s goals. I’m willing to lay down my life for her, and I give what I have to her so that she knows that I love her and want her to grow in her love for me.
There are a number of reasons I love her—her beauty, her pure heart—but one thing that makes me crazy in love with her is knowing that she only has one husband. I love knowing that there’s only one man she turns to for her needs. There’s only one man she confides her deepest hopes and fears in. There’s only one man whom she trusts completely to be by her side forever.
Now, I could go on telling you about my love for my wife for quite some time, but I don’t want to monopolize your entire afternoon and, frankly, you’d probably get tired of hearing me gush about my wife after the first hour or so. And of course I’m not here to do that. But I am here to talk about something important to our lives as God’s church, and the easiest way to help us understand what we’re going to talk about is by comparing something we know—a man’s great, great love for his wife—with something that we may not fully understand: Christ’s love for His church.
The Bible tells us the way Christ loves His church is much like the way a man loves his wife. He treasures His church. He died for His church and lives with His church. He gives gifts to His church so that it may succeed. His church trusts only in Him, confides only in Him, and He alone is the loving Head of His church.
Over the next few weeks we’re going to be in a sermon series called Body/Building. It’s kind of an interesting title: We have two words that are synonymous with the word “church”: “body” and “building.” Both words describe Christ’s Church. But if you say them together—“ bodybuilding”—we have a word that describes the process of making a body stronger and healthier through discipline and exercise.
It was last year about this time that we spent forty days studying and discussing God’s five purposes for His church, remember? What we talked about then were the five things that made a healthy, Bible-based church: worship, fellowship, discipleship, mission, and ministry. Those are all things the church does.
But what I want to do with this sermon series is explore the relationship between Christ and His Church. We’ll talk about how He equips His church to accomplish her tasks and goal. We’ll talk about how the Church is guided by love. We’ll talk about how the church chooses methods that get desired results. And we’ll talk about one of the central objects of the Church’s faith: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But for today there’s just one thing that we are going to focus on: Christ as the head of His Church.
Ephesians 1:22-23 says, “22 God placed all things under his—that’s Christ’s—under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
That verse says a few important things. First, Christ reigns supreme over everything. He has absolute, final authority in all of creation. Christ reigns supreme in Heaven. He reigns supreme over the angels. He reigns supreme over the world. He is truly the King of kings and the Lord of lords. His word is final. His rule is absolute. The governments of the earth are subject to Him. The surgeon’s hand, a mother’s child . . . there is nothing that is not under Him.
But as true as that is, that verse also tells us that Christ was given a special relationship to His church. Yes, He is the supreme ruler over all, but He alone is the head of his church. Now, a head is intimately connected to the body. The head dictates where the body goes, what it does. We know that the head controls all of the body’s functions. Whether voluntary or automatic, every muscle that moves, every function that the body performs, is controlled by the head. It doesn’t stretch the point too much to say that the head defines the life of the body.
What would the body be without the head? It couldn’t survive. When we apply that terminology to Christ and His church, we must remember that this remains true. This isn’t just idle speculation, it’s not just a nice metaphor. Christ isn’t just the figure-head of the church, some sort of titular leader that guides us, but He is the very one who gives the Church life and breath. He alone is the One who gives the Church direction. He alone is the One who defines the life of the Church.
Now wait a minute . . . didn’t we just hear in the epistle reading where it’s the Holy Spirit that gives gifts to the Church? So how can I say that Christ alone defines the life of the Church? Am I just overstating my point, or does God Himself, in every member of the Trinity, point the Church to Christ?
No, I’m not overstating this. Even if we look to our God, every member of the Trinity points us to Christ. The Father speaks from a cloud in Matthew 17:5 and says, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” The Father points us to Christ. Jesus Christ Himself says that He has come so that we might be with the Father, but to get there? He points to Himself. John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” The Son points us to Christ. And the job of the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus in John 14:26, is to “teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” The Holy Spirit points us to Christ.
Our very relationship with God, with each member of the Trinity, points us to Jesus Christ as our head. Christ defines the life of the Church.
Christ defines the life of the Church. Think about that for a minute or two. Our church-year calendar . . . that revolves around the life of Christ, so He shapes our lives of worship. The whole of our Scriptures point solely to Christ: the Old Testament points forward to Him, the New Testament focuses us on His work 2000 years ago even as it draws us into His work today. Our hymns and praise songs focus our attention on Christ. Even our traditional church furniture, from the altar to the pulpit to the Paschal candle . . . they all in some way focus us on Christ . . . His work . . . His person . . . Himself. Because He alone is the head of the Church.
Bodybuilding . . . the process of making a body stronger and healthier through discipline and exercise . . . it all starts with the head. This is Paul’s point from the epistle lesson. Paul is about to launch into several chapters that detail how the Body of Christ—the church—works together as one to accomplish the things of God. He’s going to tell us how to work together, but first he focuses our attention on the rightful head of the church: Christ Himself. No one can say, “Jesus is Lord”—that is to say, “Jesus is the head”—except by the workings of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit whose job it is to point us to Christ.
From there Paul jumps into a listing of seemingly different things, but notice that his focus isn’t on diversity, but on unity. 1 Corinthians 12:4-6: “4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.”
We are united as one body, with one head. One Lord Jesus Christ whom we all worship and serve. And though it is true that we are a diverse bunch, each with different tasks—and to a certain extent we’ll talk about that next week—Paul’s overall thrust in this passage is our unity. 1 Corinthians 12:8-11, “8 To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit . . .”
Every task, every role in the church, they are all there to serve one purpose, and that is to point to Jesus Christ. That means that the Church pulls together towards one goal, in one direction. It’s against our nature to pull against each other, to each serve our own agendas, because we are united as one. It doesn’t matter what I say, what he thinks, what she feels, what you do, what matters is what Christ says, what He does . . . and where He leads.
If all this is true—if Christ alone truly is the head of the church, the head of Our Saviour Lutheran Church—then what is our primary responsibility as His church? To follow Him. To go where He goes. To do as He does. To do as He says. To truly be His body.
Now, we have a lot more to talk about in the coming weeks. We’re not even ¼ of the way on knowing what it means to be the Body of Christ. So stick with me; good things are coming! But as we finish today, even though we don’t yet know all the things we need to know about being Christ’s body, we do know the most important thing: Christ is the Head of His church. And it all starts with the head.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ
This past week, I got to do something I’ve never done before: I got to jump in a lake in the middle of winter. As you probably know, John and Mary Boehk host an annual Polar Bear Dip. Every year for the past four years, folks get together on January 1st for the purpose of jumping into a lake full of freezing water. Okay, so the water this year wasn’t quite freezing; but at 38 degrees it was far from balmy! The kids and I got there just a few minutes late to go in with the big crowd, but we still made sure we jumped in. As that icy water closed in over my head, I felt that this was one of the funnest, zaniest things I’ve ever done.
But water wasn’t always my friend. When I was younger I couldn’t swim very well. But it still was fun to go splash around in the kiddie pool.
The swimming pool in my hometown is kidney-shaped. You can wade in from any side, and it gradually gets deeper and deeper until you drop off a ledge at a depth of about four feet, and then it rapidly gets deeper until it drops suddenly into a pit with a maximum depth of twenty feet. That’s what we kids called The Hole.
The kiddie pool is separated from The Hole by an iron fence. And one day, I somehow let my sister talk me into leaving the safe confines of the shallow kiddie pool and venturing into the deep waters. My sister and I clung to that outside of that fence, slowly moving into deeper and deeper water, until finally we felt brave enough to let go of the fence.
We slipped into water that was far too deep for my poor swimming skills. I remember that water closing over my head, too . . . but this time it was horribly frightening. We struggled to the surface long enough to gasp for help and then went under again. I went down once . . . twice . . . three times, each time wondering if that would be my last time I would ever breathe air again. Finally—after what seemed like an eternity—some bigger kids noticed our struggles and dragged us back to the fence. I can’t remember what happened after that, but I do know that for the longest time after, whenever I remembered coming that close to death, I would shudder with shame at being foolish enough to get into deep water that I had no business going into the first place.
Have you ever done something like that? Something so foolish, so absolutely stupid that you had to live with the shame of the choices you made? That shame starts to define you after a while, doesn’t it? It starts to dominate your life. You start to look at yourself as a failure; just when you feel you can move on with your life, that old shame comes back strong, kicking holes in your sense of self-worth. Your identity becomes wrapped up in that one moment when you made that stupid, stupid decision and the water closed in over your head, changing your life forever.
What can you do at that point? You want to move on with your life, but part of you will always be there, drowning in your own Hole. You know you shouldn’t have gone there; you wish you would have avoided the temptation. But you can’t turn back the clock; you have to live with the poor choices you made, the choices that dragged you and everyone else in your life into a deep pit of sin and consequences. You hurt people and you can’t fix it. You sinned.
There are some folks—I’ve met them—that figure since they can never climb out of that hole they might as well start living there. The sin that led them there becomes a matter of almost daily routine. They sear their conscience and try to shove away the shame. They lie to themselves and tell themselves that it’s all right . . . everybody does it . . . it’s not such a big deal after all . . . but still they stay as far away from God as they can, because being close to Him brings back the memory of their sin, and that brings back the feelings of shame.
There are other folks—and I’ve met them, as well—that put on an act. They act like that one thing had never happened. They never talk about it openly. They stick that memory as far back in their minds as they possibly can and then they work and work and work. Unlike the first group, this groups sets out to do as much good as they can to offset their memory of their sin. But like the first group of people, this group also lies to themselves, telling themselves that they can overcome their past. And—this is interesting—also like the first group, despite all their “good” activity what they’re really doing is also staying as far away from God as they can.
Two groups of people—one you might never see in church again, the other you might see there every day. But neither of them understands exactly how to deal with their sin. Neither of them can bear to live with the shame.
Now it’s possible—just possible, mind you—that we as good church folks could say, “Well . . . that’s okay. Because we’ve got God’s grace, and His grace covers up our sins. Let them live like that.” Okay, that’s good. But is it good enough? Is it good enough to say, “Well hey, sin doesn’t matter, because we’ve got grace!” Is it good enough for us to remain in hiding, to remain in sin and separation from God, to remain in shame, or does God want something more, something better, for us?
Romans 6:1, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”
We what? We died? We died to sin? When did that happen? How did that happen?
The when is different for each of us, but the how is the same: It’s when the water closed in over our heads. Not the water of a swimming pool, but this water right here: The waters of baptism. Romans 6:3-4, “3 Or 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.”
Christ died for sin. Your sin. You know that. You’ve heard it before. For God so loved not just the world, but you, that He gave His one and only Son to die for us. Jesus Christ was lifted high, He was nailed to a cross, taking your sin upon and into Himself, He was mocked and despised by the very people He had come to save, and He died. Dead.
They took Him down from the cross and laid Him in a tomb. Three days later He rose from the dead into a newness of life that is incomprehensible in its beauty. But what stayed on the cross?
What stayed on the cross? We did. Or at least our old, sinful selves did. Romans 6:6-7, “6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.” God’s word says that through baptism our sin was nailed to the cross with Christ, that it died with Him there, and that we are free from its dominating control over our lives! This is a liberating thing! This is a beautiful thing.
How beautiful? Have you ever been to the symphony? You can count dozens, maybe even a hundred or more individual musicians. If you were to hear their one part alone it wouldn’t be anything very special. But when they play together they are united as one instrument, and the result is a beautiful, stirring piece of musical artistry that can lift your very soul. That’s what the symphony is: individual notes being bound together in a dance of unifying beauty. That’s the symphony.
So let me throw a Greek word at you now. Just one, and it occurs in verse five. Verse five says, “5 If we have been symphutos with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be symphutos with him in his resurrection.”
Symphutos. You hear the word “symphony” in there? That’s what we have through baptism in Jesus Christ. Our individual note is beautifully bound together with His in the finality of His death and the newness of His risen life.
Your poor choices in the past—the sin that’s trying to dominate your life, the shame that is eating you alive—God says that is dead. Nailed to the cross with Christ. And the Gospel connection I want to make, the application I want to give you today is that sin and repentance is not an opportunity to beat ourselves up, to wallow in an unending state of shame and self-torture, but to rise up again in Christ and walk in newness of life.
That’s your true identity in Christ: a new creation. A truly living human being. Living human beings can love and serve one another. They can be restored to right relationships. They can be forgiven and they can forgive. They can be healed . . . and they can heal. The old ways of shame and sin and death—the old self—no longer has mastery over them, and their new life in Christ is a life lived to God.
I had an opportunity like that this recently. I messed up, and it was brought to my attention. I spent the better part of a day kicking myself, thinking that I wasn’t qualified to be a pastor, thinking that I would never amount to much of anything. But God reminded me that I am forgiven and that in Him, in Christ, I am lifted up to walk a new way, to live a new life. The shame wasn’t from God—it was from Satan, trying to pull me back down into the grave, trying to make me stay dead, trying to keep me in self-centered sin. Instead, Philippians 3:13-14 forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Don’t go on sinning. Don’t stay dead. Live your new life. How do you do that? Well, you will want to begin by being honest with God. Admit to Him that you did, in fact, sin against Him. Admit that you’ve ran away from Him by either wallowing in your sin or working to deny it.
After that . . . well, you’ll probably have to work to make it right with the people you sinned against. If our new life in Christ is a life lived to God, then it’s a life that we live according to His principles. God asks that we seek forgiveness when we’ve given offense. He asks that we attempt reconciliation. And He asks for repentance: literally “turning around” from our sin and walking away from it. That may be difficult. Heck, it may be painful for you . . . but I guarantee it will be good for you, because when the water closes over our heads, He raises us in Christ, He raises us from death into new life. And that new life is something that cannot be overcome, because it is in Christ.
Romans 6:1-11 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.
But water wasn’t always my friend. When I was younger I couldn’t swim very well. But it still was fun to go splash around in the kiddie pool.
The swimming pool in my hometown is kidney-shaped. You can wade in from any side, and it gradually gets deeper and deeper until you drop off a ledge at a depth of about four feet, and then it rapidly gets deeper until it drops suddenly into a pit with a maximum depth of twenty feet. That’s what we kids called The Hole.
The kiddie pool is separated from The Hole by an iron fence. And one day, I somehow let my sister talk me into leaving the safe confines of the shallow kiddie pool and venturing into the deep waters. My sister and I clung to that outside of that fence, slowly moving into deeper and deeper water, until finally we felt brave enough to let go of the fence.
We slipped into water that was far too deep for my poor swimming skills. I remember that water closing over my head, too . . . but this time it was horribly frightening. We struggled to the surface long enough to gasp for help and then went under again. I went down once . . . twice . . . three times, each time wondering if that would be my last time I would ever breathe air again. Finally—after what seemed like an eternity—some bigger kids noticed our struggles and dragged us back to the fence. I can’t remember what happened after that, but I do know that for the longest time after, whenever I remembered coming that close to death, I would shudder with shame at being foolish enough to get into deep water that I had no business going into the first place.
Have you ever done something like that? Something so foolish, so absolutely stupid that you had to live with the shame of the choices you made? That shame starts to define you after a while, doesn’t it? It starts to dominate your life. You start to look at yourself as a failure; just when you feel you can move on with your life, that old shame comes back strong, kicking holes in your sense of self-worth. Your identity becomes wrapped up in that one moment when you made that stupid, stupid decision and the water closed in over your head, changing your life forever.
What can you do at that point? You want to move on with your life, but part of you will always be there, drowning in your own Hole. You know you shouldn’t have gone there; you wish you would have avoided the temptation. But you can’t turn back the clock; you have to live with the poor choices you made, the choices that dragged you and everyone else in your life into a deep pit of sin and consequences. You hurt people and you can’t fix it. You sinned.
There are some folks—I’ve met them—that figure since they can never climb out of that hole they might as well start living there. The sin that led them there becomes a matter of almost daily routine. They sear their conscience and try to shove away the shame. They lie to themselves and tell themselves that it’s all right . . . everybody does it . . . it’s not such a big deal after all . . . but still they stay as far away from God as they can, because being close to Him brings back the memory of their sin, and that brings back the feelings of shame.
There are other folks—and I’ve met them, as well—that put on an act. They act like that one thing had never happened. They never talk about it openly. They stick that memory as far back in their minds as they possibly can and then they work and work and work. Unlike the first group, this groups sets out to do as much good as they can to offset their memory of their sin. But like the first group of people, this group also lies to themselves, telling themselves that they can overcome their past. And—this is interesting—also like the first group, despite all their “good” activity what they’re really doing is also staying as far away from God as they can.
Two groups of people—one you might never see in church again, the other you might see there every day. But neither of them understands exactly how to deal with their sin. Neither of them can bear to live with the shame.
Now it’s possible—just possible, mind you—that we as good church folks could say, “Well . . . that’s okay. Because we’ve got God’s grace, and His grace covers up our sins. Let them live like that.” Okay, that’s good. But is it good enough? Is it good enough to say, “Well hey, sin doesn’t matter, because we’ve got grace!” Is it good enough for us to remain in hiding, to remain in sin and separation from God, to remain in shame, or does God want something more, something better, for us?
Romans 6:1, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”
We what? We died? We died to sin? When did that happen? How did that happen?
The when is different for each of us, but the how is the same: It’s when the water closed in over our heads. Not the water of a swimming pool, but this water right here: The waters of baptism. Romans 6:3-4, “3 Or 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.”
Christ died for sin. Your sin. You know that. You’ve heard it before. For God so loved not just the world, but you, that He gave His one and only Son to die for us. Jesus Christ was lifted high, He was nailed to a cross, taking your sin upon and into Himself, He was mocked and despised by the very people He had come to save, and He died. Dead.
They took Him down from the cross and laid Him in a tomb. Three days later He rose from the dead into a newness of life that is incomprehensible in its beauty. But what stayed on the cross?
What stayed on the cross? We did. Or at least our old, sinful selves did. Romans 6:6-7, “6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.” God’s word says that through baptism our sin was nailed to the cross with Christ, that it died with Him there, and that we are free from its dominating control over our lives! This is a liberating thing! This is a beautiful thing.
How beautiful? Have you ever been to the symphony? You can count dozens, maybe even a hundred or more individual musicians. If you were to hear their one part alone it wouldn’t be anything very special. But when they play together they are united as one instrument, and the result is a beautiful, stirring piece of musical artistry that can lift your very soul. That’s what the symphony is: individual notes being bound together in a dance of unifying beauty. That’s the symphony.
So let me throw a Greek word at you now. Just one, and it occurs in verse five. Verse five says, “5 If we have been symphutos with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be symphutos with him in his resurrection.”
Symphutos. You hear the word “symphony” in there? That’s what we have through baptism in Jesus Christ. Our individual note is beautifully bound together with His in the finality of His death and the newness of His risen life.
Your poor choices in the past—the sin that’s trying to dominate your life, the shame that is eating you alive—God says that is dead. Nailed to the cross with Christ. And the Gospel connection I want to make, the application I want to give you today is that sin and repentance is not an opportunity to beat ourselves up, to wallow in an unending state of shame and self-torture, but to rise up again in Christ and walk in newness of life.
That’s your true identity in Christ: a new creation. A truly living human being. Living human beings can love and serve one another. They can be restored to right relationships. They can be forgiven and they can forgive. They can be healed . . . and they can heal. The old ways of shame and sin and death—the old self—no longer has mastery over them, and their new life in Christ is a life lived to God.
I had an opportunity like that this recently. I messed up, and it was brought to my attention. I spent the better part of a day kicking myself, thinking that I wasn’t qualified to be a pastor, thinking that I would never amount to much of anything. But God reminded me that I am forgiven and that in Him, in Christ, I am lifted up to walk a new way, to live a new life. The shame wasn’t from God—it was from Satan, trying to pull me back down into the grave, trying to make me stay dead, trying to keep me in self-centered sin. Instead, Philippians 3:13-14 forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Don’t go on sinning. Don’t stay dead. Live your new life. How do you do that? Well, you will want to begin by being honest with God. Admit to Him that you did, in fact, sin against Him. Admit that you’ve ran away from Him by either wallowing in your sin or working to deny it.
After that . . . well, you’ll probably have to work to make it right with the people you sinned against. If our new life in Christ is a life lived to God, then it’s a life that we live according to His principles. God asks that we seek forgiveness when we’ve given offense. He asks that we attempt reconciliation. And He asks for repentance: literally “turning around” from our sin and walking away from it. That may be difficult. Heck, it may be painful for you . . . but I guarantee it will be good for you, because when the water closes over our heads, He raises us in Christ, He raises us from death into new life. And that new life is something that cannot be overcome, because it is in Christ.
Romans 6:1-11 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.
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