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.
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