Princeton Presbyterian Church

Princeton Presbyterian Church (EPC) Sermon # 1582

April 9, 2023

1^st Reading - Luke 24.1-12; Romans 6.3-14   Click here for audio worship.

Dr. Ed Pettus

(This is an extended outline, not a verbatim transcript.)

 

“Newness of Life”

 

 ³Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. ⁵For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. ⁶We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. ⁷For one who has died has been set free from sin. ⁸Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. ¹⁰For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. ¹¹So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. ¹²Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. ¹³Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. ¹⁴For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

 

• Baptism - A Seal of Easter

 

Christ has risen! There is no greater message we can give to people today. He has risen! It is hard to imagine what the women truly felt in telling the disciples that Jesus was not in the tomb, but had risen from the dead. Luke 24 reports that the disciples did not believe them. Peter ran to the tomb and also found it empty. Christ has risen! The world has not been the same since. One of the reasons Easter is such an important day is because we know what occurred from Thursday through Saturday. Christ suffered the most difficult physical and emotional sufferings anyone could go through. Christ went through all of this for our sake. He took on our sin, a substitute offering, the sacrificial lamb.

Our sin began long ago when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and passed the stain of sin to all humanity. That brokenness separated us from God. Jesus came to reconcile us to God and His crucifixion and resurrection has paid the price of sin and brought us back to God. We have come from the deathliness of sin to the life of abundant mercy and grace in Christ.

 

As the apostle Paul tells us, [God] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1.13-14). All our brokenness is healed by the wounds of Christ on the cross and in His resurrection. Today I want to examine how Paul connects us to Christ in Romans 6, the connection that is symbolized in our baptism. Baptism is a sign and seal of connection with Christ’s death. It is the sign and seal of the covenant of grace. God’s grace was shown to us through Christ on the cross and Christ risen from the dead. In baptism, we are buried with Him, in the tomb, so to speak! We go under the waters symbolically representing being buried with Him. But then we are raised from the waters, from the “dead” to the newness of life. This is Easter! Our baptism is a sign of our union with Christ, engrafted into Him. It signifies rebirth and forgiveness of sin. It is the cross of Christ and the empty tomb that makes all of this possible.

 

 

• United With Christ

 

We are united with Christ and in that union we share in and we are affected by His death and resurrection. How is this done? The old self is crucified. We die to the old self, the sinful nature and we take up our cross to crucify the body of sin. United in Christ’s death, sin becomes nothing, that is, it no power over us. The problem comes when we give it power refusing to crucify the will to sin. In Christ, one of our goals is to seek every way possible to no longer be enslaved to sin. It can be a struggle. It is a lifelong work. But in Christ, our nature is truly changed in that we do not want to sin anymore. Anyone who claims a life of sin as acceptable to Christ does not understand the meaning of union with Christ.

In Romans 6 Paul is telling the Christians what they should already know...Do you not know...baptized into death, buried with Him. So that – like Christ, raised to walk in the newness of life. This is a reminder to those who already knew this or should have known. Union with Christ is a work of the Holy Spirit. There is a paradox of death leading to life. In all of Paul’s thoughts the death of Christ leads to life for all who believe, all who love Christ, all who follow Jesus. Death is defeated in the resurrection and sin defeated in Jesus’ death on the cross. We no longer have to live enslaved to sin and death.

The conclusion is that we let not sin reign in our mortal bodies. How? Believe, be convinced, trust that everything in this passage is truth. Present your self to God – in prayer, worship, discipline, study, obedience, and service. All of this is made possible because of God’s grace. God has graced us with Christ and all that Christ makes possible.

Baptism is the sign and seal of this union with Christ. Paul opens the revelation that one thing follows another...if we have been united with Christ in death, so to in life, in a resurrection life, verse 5 and verse 8, specifically 8, Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. This is the power of today, Easter, dead to sin and alive to God. Old self crucified that we might live with Christ, in Christ, through Christ.

 

 

• The Defeat of Sin

 

It is in the defeat of sin that we find life with Christ. Sin separated us from God and in Christ that separation is healed. We are reconciled to God. Sin is dead to us. It has no power except for that which we give it. This is the power of the Gospel. Jesus has healed all our brokenness. Even when we are broken in this life from time to time, it is only a temporary condition. God heals, God mends, God redeems, God saves. Nothing can separate us from His love. We are united with Christ in such a way that we now can live our lives free from the power of sin.

⁶We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. ⁷For one who has died has been set free from sin.

It’s great the way Paul conveys this truth, “we know” that our old self was crucified. We know this to be truth. God has, through Christ, destroyed sin’s power over us. It has been brought to nothing. We do not have to live by our sinful passions or the worldly temptations or the devil’s evil schemes. We are free to live only to God. But it is not just about dying in Christ but that we also live with Him, He in us and we in Him...

⁸Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. ¹⁰For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. ¹¹So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

• Newness of Life

 

 

Easter is about life, new life, for He is alive! And just like Jesus, we have new life, the newness of life. We are new creations in Christ. New life, abundant life, resurrected from the death of the old self, new self, new creation, so we present ourselves to God because we have been brought from death to life! Salvation is not just about what we have been saved from but also about what we have been saved for. In this passage it is that we have been saved for life and it is a life that does not wait for heaven, but begins the moment we are regenerated by God’s grace. The invitation today is to participate in the life of God, in the fellowship of God.

 

Romans 8.11, If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

 

Filled with life by being filled with the fullness of God. The Ephesians 3.14-19 prayer kind of sums up what it means to live out of our baptism -- “¹⁴For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” That fullness comes by the Holy Spirit and I would imagine it also comes with the Word of God. The Spirit is at work in us through the living Word that reforms and reshapes and corrects and inspires.

We now have the power to overcome sin by presenting ourselves to God. This might mean giving ourselves over again and again, recommitting ourselves to God and learning what it means to grow in grace and faith and learn the way of sanctification. This is the life of the disciple raised to new life, one of growth and righteousness and following Jesus day by day...taking up our cross daily to walk the path of God.

It’s Easter Sunday and He is risen! Why does Christ’s resurrection matter to us? We are raised to new life in Him. Everything is different. Everything is redeemed. All thanks is to God. Like calling Lazarus from the tomb, Jesus has also called us from our tombs of sin and brokenness, come forth! Unbind him and let him go. Hallelujah! What Christ has done turns all our deathly ways into ways of life.

Easter completes our testimony to the Good News about Jesus Christ. It is the final word we give to people who may be searching for answers in their lives, crushed by the chaos of the world, hungry for something more to life than the modern “progressivism” of worldly life, or learning that sin leads them to destruction. In the end, all who follow Jesus need to be able to defend the faith, to defend the hope that is within us. Romans 6 is one more source for us to know in sharing the gospel narrative. We may have to go back to the beginning to bring people to the news of Jesus bringing us from death to life, but that is a familiar place for us. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and thus brought sin upon us all. The answer to that is Jesus Christ who lived and died and was raised up so that the relationship broken in Genesis could be restored. We believe in Jesus and confess Him Lord and we are thus saved from that which brings death and defeat. We have victory over sin and death because Jesus has conquered sin and death on the cross and out from the tomb. He has risen! Because He lives, we live as well.

It’s Easter! He has risen. Let us celebrate this day and remember to celebrate it every Sunday from now until Christ returns. Amen.