Translation/paraphrase of Romans 6 and sermon preached at Edgewood Church Atlanta on July 31, 2016.
Paul’s letter to Christians in Rome, Italy about 50 A.D. Chapter 6
Paraphrase/translation from the Greek New Testament, Sharyn Dowd.
OK, so should we just keep in sinning so God can keep on forgiving us? HECK NO!
Look: Those of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried with him through being baptized into his death so that, just as Christ was raised from among the dead by the glory of God the Father, in the same way we too might live a brand new way of life. If we die in a way similar to the way Jesus died, we will also be resurrected just as Jesus was. Our old selves were crucified with Jesus so that all the idolatry in us could be done away with. Since we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Christ, who was raised from among the dead, is no longer subject to death. Jesus died, which means he died in relationship with idolatry once and for all; and now that Jesus is alive, he lives only in relationship with God. In the same way, you too can understand yourselves as dead in relationship with idolatry and alive in relationship with God, because you are in Christ Jesus.
So, don’t allow Idolatry to boss you around and tell you what to do and what to desire. Quit letting Idolatry use you to promote injustice. Instead let God use you resurrected-from-among-the-dead people to bring about justice and whatever else God wants to happen. Idolatry doesn’t have any more jurisdiction over you because you have moved from the Rules and Regulations neighborhood into the Loved and Forgiven neighborhood.
OK, so does that mean that we can do whatever we want to whomever we want because we are loved and forgiven? Are you kidding? NO WAY! Every slave obeys his or her owner. If you belong to Idolatry you obey Idolatry. If you belong to God, you obey God. Praise God --- you used to be slaves of Idolatry but now you have become obedient with your whole selves to what you have been taught about the Jesus Way. You have been set free from slavery to Idolatry and become willing slaves of God, who is always just. (I’m talking about “slavery” in the hope that it will help you understand---it’s a metaphor---get it?) When you were slaves of Idolatry, you didn’t even try to do right. Be honest --- how was that working for you? Aren’t you ashamed of the mess you got yourself into back then? That Idolatry stuff will kill you. Think about how much better life is now that you belong to God. Now you have REAL LIFE—not just existence.
Remember:
You can work hard for Idolatry and all you ever get paid for it is death---deadness now and death forever.
Or you can accept God’s free gift of life --- real life now and life forever with God, all because of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Paraphrase/translation from the Greek New Testament, Sharyn Dowd.
OK, so should we just keep in sinning so God can keep on forgiving us? HECK NO!
Look: Those of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried with him through being baptized into his death so that, just as Christ was raised from among the dead by the glory of God the Father, in the same way we too might live a brand new way of life. If we die in a way similar to the way Jesus died, we will also be resurrected just as Jesus was. Our old selves were crucified with Jesus so that all the idolatry in us could be done away with. Since we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Christ, who was raised from among the dead, is no longer subject to death. Jesus died, which means he died in relationship with idolatry once and for all; and now that Jesus is alive, he lives only in relationship with God. In the same way, you too can understand yourselves as dead in relationship with idolatry and alive in relationship with God, because you are in Christ Jesus.
So, don’t allow Idolatry to boss you around and tell you what to do and what to desire. Quit letting Idolatry use you to promote injustice. Instead let God use you resurrected-from-among-the-dead people to bring about justice and whatever else God wants to happen. Idolatry doesn’t have any more jurisdiction over you because you have moved from the Rules and Regulations neighborhood into the Loved and Forgiven neighborhood.
OK, so does that mean that we can do whatever we want to whomever we want because we are loved and forgiven? Are you kidding? NO WAY! Every slave obeys his or her owner. If you belong to Idolatry you obey Idolatry. If you belong to God, you obey God. Praise God --- you used to be slaves of Idolatry but now you have become obedient with your whole selves to what you have been taught about the Jesus Way. You have been set free from slavery to Idolatry and become willing slaves of God, who is always just. (I’m talking about “slavery” in the hope that it will help you understand---it’s a metaphor---get it?) When you were slaves of Idolatry, you didn’t even try to do right. Be honest --- how was that working for you? Aren’t you ashamed of the mess you got yourself into back then? That Idolatry stuff will kill you. Think about how much better life is now that you belong to God. Now you have REAL LIFE—not just existence.
Remember:
You can work hard for Idolatry and all you ever get paid for it is death---deadness now and death forever.
Or you can accept God’s free gift of life --- real life now and life forever with God, all because of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Last week Pastor Nathan talked about how God bridged the distance between people and God by coming in Jesus to get up in our faces, to embrace us just as we are, and to offer us new life in place of our messed-up lives. When people decide to do that, here at Edgewood and lots of other churches, we baptize them. We dip them completely under water in that tank back behind me and we say, “Buried with Christ in baptism, raised to walk in a new way of life. A lot of people say that baptism is a symbol of a person’s commitment to follow Christ.
But what Paul says here in the sixth chapter of his letter to the Christians in Rome, Italy is that baptism is NOT a symbol of our commitment to Christ. Instead, it is our spiritual death to a previous way of life and our spiritual incorporation into the life of Jesus, who died and was raised from the dead by God. In other words, Christians are not nice people who believe in Jesus and try to do good. Christians are people who have died with respect to everything but the God who made them and then came to set them free.
Definition: Idolatry. You heard Raketa read the word Idolatry a lot just now. I don’t know what you think about when you hear the word “idol” or “idolatry” so I want you to know Paul means by it and what I mean by it. An idol is not just a statue that someone bows down to. There are a lot of religions that have those statues, but the statues are not the false gods. They are just the symbol of the false god that the person is worshipping. Here in the Edgewood neighborhood we don’t have a lot of people that bow down to statues, but we do have a lot of people who worship idols that don’t have statues. A person who worships an idol is called an “idolater.” Idolatry is what Jesus lived and died to save us from and that’s what Paul is talking about in Romans 6.
So, what exactly is an idol? An idol is anything around which you organize your life that is not God. And idolatry is trusting anything or anybody with your security, your self-worth, and the direction of your life that is not God. “Worship” is “worthship” What is worth more to you than anything else is what you worship.
It’s your god.
So if your main concern is what other people think about you, your reputation or your street creds is your god.
If your main concern is how you look, then your appearance and your wardrobe is your god.
One of the gods that I tend to turn to in my worst moments is being right about everything and being on the right side of every issue. So that’s one of my main idols that I have to turn away from every day. I have to be willing to listen to people I disagree with, and, when I discover an error in my thinking or information, admit it openly, no matter how embarrassing that is.
Why is that important? Because it makes me more open to learn something God wants to teach me and I don’t want to miss that. I don’t want to miss anything God sends my way because whatever it is, it will be so much better than the mess I work out for myself.
Now, here’s a little background on the writer of this letter, whose name was Paul.
Just like Jesus, Paul was a Jew. Even after he became a follower of Jesus he still thought of himself as a Jew. He just thought that following Jesus was the best way to be a good Jew. He also thought that people who aren’t Jews can also be Jesus-followers, which got him in a lot of trouble.
The thing that distinguished Jews from other ancient religions is that Jews believed that God had given them the laws and teachings of what we call the Old Testament as a wonderful gift. They didn’t think of the laws as a burden or a problem. They believed what it says in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy: Living by God’s teaching leads to life; living your own way leads to death. Moses says to the people, “Don’t be stupid. Choose life!”
Deuteronomy 30:19-20: I call Heaven and Earth to witness what I’m saying to you today: I place before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse. Choose life!
That’s why Paul thinks it is good news to escape from slavery to Idolatry and become God’s property instead. Like Moses, Paul figures that when people try to life their own way, they are going to stumble into a bunch of traps set by the Devil and his main sidekick, Idolatry.
From Paul’s point of view, people are either in bondage to Idolatry or they are bonded to God because God’s obedient Son, Jesus, has received them into his own death and resurrection life.
At the end of chapter 6, Paul says this:
Remember:
You can work hard for Idolatry and all you ever get paid is death---deadness now and death forever.
Or you can accept God’s free gift of life --- real life now and life forever with God, all because of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Or, as the old preachers used to say, “The Devil always pays his employees with counterfeit money.” Paul says, “Die to the idolatry in your life and choose real life with God over mere existence as an idolater.”
If that sounds good to you, your next question might be, “So, how do we go about dying to idolatry?”
There are probably many answers to this question, but I’m going to talk about the one that I am most convinced about – join a 12-step group and work the 12 steps with a sponsor or an accountability partner or both.
Step 1 of the process of recovering from addiction to idolatry of any kind is to Admit that I am powerless over the hurts, habits, and hangups that call the shots in my life and that as a result, my life has become unmanageable, part of the time or most of the time.
Just admitting that out loud deals a major blow to Idolatry. Idolatry is happy as long as we try to change ourselves, or rationalize that really my life is not as bad as so-and-so’s life. As long as we think we can work our own way into a life of freedom and wholeness, Idolatry doesn’t worry because Idolatry knows that we can’t help ourselves. But when we admit that we are powerless, we tap into reality and Idolatry hates that. Reality is the enemy of addiction and Idolatry.
Step 2 says, “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” That means leaving the pity party behind, giving up feeling sorry for ourselves, and deciding that although we can’t fix ourselves, we can be fixed by a power greater than ourselves.
Step 3: “We made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God.” That’s not a one-time decision. It is an every-day decision to surrender ourselves, our present, our future, our reputations, our finances, our families, to God. To take our hands off the steering wheel of our lives and to put God in the driver’s seat. To trust that wherever God drives us to and however rocky the road, God is better able to direct our lives than we are.
I’m not going to go through all 12 of the steps because this is a worship service, not a 12-step meeting. Let’s return to the idea of the death of the old self: Here’s what Paul says in Romans 6:
Our old selves were crucified with Jesus so that all the idolatry in us could be done away with. Since we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Christ, who was raised from among the dead, is no longer subject to death. Jesus died, which means he died in relationship with idolatry once and for all; and now that Jesus is alive, he lives only in relationship with God. In the same way, you too can understand yourselves as dead in relationship with idolatry and alive in relationship with God, because you are in Christ Jesus.
How did Jesus die? He was crucified. He was nailed to a cross, stark naked in public with a sign over his head that accused him of being a public enemy, a terrorist, and a threat to society. The soldiers who killed Jesus did it that way so that not only would he be executed, but that he would be humiliated. Stripped of all his humanity and dignity, dying slowly while people who didn’t have anything better to do stared at his naked, bleeding body.
When we participate in the death of Jesus in order to be set free from Idolatry, we also experience some humiliation. It is humiliating to admit that my life is out of my control and I have to ask God to run it for me. It is humiliating to make a list of every way I have hurt people and then get in touch with them and ask how I can make up for what I did or said. It is humiliating to give up my revenge and forgive people who have dissed me and done me wrong.
But as I begin to do those things, I start getting lighter in my mind and emotions. I start feeling like my old self-defensive, self-righteous self who hides all my weaknesses is falling away and a new self is being resurrected. I start to feel like I can breathe again. I start to feel free.
Paul says, “You have been set free from slavery to Idolatry and become willing slaves of God, who is always just. . . . When you were slaves of Idolatry, you didn’t even try to do right. Be honest --- how was that working for you? Aren’t you ashamed of the mess you got yourself into back then? That Idolatry stuff will kill you. Think about how much better life is now that you belong to God. Now you have REAL LIFE—not just existence.”
St. Augustine, one of the earliest Christian leaders in Africa, said that to be a slave of God is perfect freedom.
There are a lot of people here in this room who can testify that it’s true. We aren’t good people. We are recovering idolaters who find freedom in dying to our old selves and receiving new life from Jesus.
The best news of all is that there are no qualifications for this Jesus journey except being completely unqualified. Here at Edgewood we are not into fancy clothes and fake smiles because Jesus is not into that mess. We are into reality and the name of reality is Jesus.
If you have never started on the Jesus way, there will be a time of response now when you can come and talk with one of our pastors about a next step you can take. They won’t pressure you, but they will listen and pray with you. If you have been a Christian for a long time but you are still bothered by hurts, habits, and hangups that are keeping you from having peace and hope in your life, you can come talk to me about attending a Christian 12-step group that I go to every Sunday evening I’m in town. It’s called “Celebrate Recovery.” If you don’t have transportation, I’ll get you there.
Just don’t walk out of here with the same burdens you brought in with you. Jesus is here to set you free.
But what Paul says here in the sixth chapter of his letter to the Christians in Rome, Italy is that baptism is NOT a symbol of our commitment to Christ. Instead, it is our spiritual death to a previous way of life and our spiritual incorporation into the life of Jesus, who died and was raised from the dead by God. In other words, Christians are not nice people who believe in Jesus and try to do good. Christians are people who have died with respect to everything but the God who made them and then came to set them free.
Definition: Idolatry. You heard Raketa read the word Idolatry a lot just now. I don’t know what you think about when you hear the word “idol” or “idolatry” so I want you to know Paul means by it and what I mean by it. An idol is not just a statue that someone bows down to. There are a lot of religions that have those statues, but the statues are not the false gods. They are just the symbol of the false god that the person is worshipping. Here in the Edgewood neighborhood we don’t have a lot of people that bow down to statues, but we do have a lot of people who worship idols that don’t have statues. A person who worships an idol is called an “idolater.” Idolatry is what Jesus lived and died to save us from and that’s what Paul is talking about in Romans 6.
So, what exactly is an idol? An idol is anything around which you organize your life that is not God. And idolatry is trusting anything or anybody with your security, your self-worth, and the direction of your life that is not God. “Worship” is “worthship” What is worth more to you than anything else is what you worship.
It’s your god.
So if your main concern is what other people think about you, your reputation or your street creds is your god.
If your main concern is how you look, then your appearance and your wardrobe is your god.
One of the gods that I tend to turn to in my worst moments is being right about everything and being on the right side of every issue. So that’s one of my main idols that I have to turn away from every day. I have to be willing to listen to people I disagree with, and, when I discover an error in my thinking or information, admit it openly, no matter how embarrassing that is.
Why is that important? Because it makes me more open to learn something God wants to teach me and I don’t want to miss that. I don’t want to miss anything God sends my way because whatever it is, it will be so much better than the mess I work out for myself.
Now, here’s a little background on the writer of this letter, whose name was Paul.
Just like Jesus, Paul was a Jew. Even after he became a follower of Jesus he still thought of himself as a Jew. He just thought that following Jesus was the best way to be a good Jew. He also thought that people who aren’t Jews can also be Jesus-followers, which got him in a lot of trouble.
The thing that distinguished Jews from other ancient religions is that Jews believed that God had given them the laws and teachings of what we call the Old Testament as a wonderful gift. They didn’t think of the laws as a burden or a problem. They believed what it says in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy: Living by God’s teaching leads to life; living your own way leads to death. Moses says to the people, “Don’t be stupid. Choose life!”
Deuteronomy 30:19-20: I call Heaven and Earth to witness what I’m saying to you today: I place before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse. Choose life!
That’s why Paul thinks it is good news to escape from slavery to Idolatry and become God’s property instead. Like Moses, Paul figures that when people try to life their own way, they are going to stumble into a bunch of traps set by the Devil and his main sidekick, Idolatry.
From Paul’s point of view, people are either in bondage to Idolatry or they are bonded to God because God’s obedient Son, Jesus, has received them into his own death and resurrection life.
At the end of chapter 6, Paul says this:
Remember:
You can work hard for Idolatry and all you ever get paid is death---deadness now and death forever.
Or you can accept God’s free gift of life --- real life now and life forever with God, all because of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Or, as the old preachers used to say, “The Devil always pays his employees with counterfeit money.” Paul says, “Die to the idolatry in your life and choose real life with God over mere existence as an idolater.”
If that sounds good to you, your next question might be, “So, how do we go about dying to idolatry?”
There are probably many answers to this question, but I’m going to talk about the one that I am most convinced about – join a 12-step group and work the 12 steps with a sponsor or an accountability partner or both.
Step 1 of the process of recovering from addiction to idolatry of any kind is to Admit that I am powerless over the hurts, habits, and hangups that call the shots in my life and that as a result, my life has become unmanageable, part of the time or most of the time.
Just admitting that out loud deals a major blow to Idolatry. Idolatry is happy as long as we try to change ourselves, or rationalize that really my life is not as bad as so-and-so’s life. As long as we think we can work our own way into a life of freedom and wholeness, Idolatry doesn’t worry because Idolatry knows that we can’t help ourselves. But when we admit that we are powerless, we tap into reality and Idolatry hates that. Reality is the enemy of addiction and Idolatry.
Step 2 says, “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” That means leaving the pity party behind, giving up feeling sorry for ourselves, and deciding that although we can’t fix ourselves, we can be fixed by a power greater than ourselves.
Step 3: “We made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God.” That’s not a one-time decision. It is an every-day decision to surrender ourselves, our present, our future, our reputations, our finances, our families, to God. To take our hands off the steering wheel of our lives and to put God in the driver’s seat. To trust that wherever God drives us to and however rocky the road, God is better able to direct our lives than we are.
I’m not going to go through all 12 of the steps because this is a worship service, not a 12-step meeting. Let’s return to the idea of the death of the old self: Here’s what Paul says in Romans 6:
Our old selves were crucified with Jesus so that all the idolatry in us could be done away with. Since we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Christ, who was raised from among the dead, is no longer subject to death. Jesus died, which means he died in relationship with idolatry once and for all; and now that Jesus is alive, he lives only in relationship with God. In the same way, you too can understand yourselves as dead in relationship with idolatry and alive in relationship with God, because you are in Christ Jesus.
How did Jesus die? He was crucified. He was nailed to a cross, stark naked in public with a sign over his head that accused him of being a public enemy, a terrorist, and a threat to society. The soldiers who killed Jesus did it that way so that not only would he be executed, but that he would be humiliated. Stripped of all his humanity and dignity, dying slowly while people who didn’t have anything better to do stared at his naked, bleeding body.
When we participate in the death of Jesus in order to be set free from Idolatry, we also experience some humiliation. It is humiliating to admit that my life is out of my control and I have to ask God to run it for me. It is humiliating to make a list of every way I have hurt people and then get in touch with them and ask how I can make up for what I did or said. It is humiliating to give up my revenge and forgive people who have dissed me and done me wrong.
But as I begin to do those things, I start getting lighter in my mind and emotions. I start feeling like my old self-defensive, self-righteous self who hides all my weaknesses is falling away and a new self is being resurrected. I start to feel like I can breathe again. I start to feel free.
Paul says, “You have been set free from slavery to Idolatry and become willing slaves of God, who is always just. . . . When you were slaves of Idolatry, you didn’t even try to do right. Be honest --- how was that working for you? Aren’t you ashamed of the mess you got yourself into back then? That Idolatry stuff will kill you. Think about how much better life is now that you belong to God. Now you have REAL LIFE—not just existence.”
St. Augustine, one of the earliest Christian leaders in Africa, said that to be a slave of God is perfect freedom.
There are a lot of people here in this room who can testify that it’s true. We aren’t good people. We are recovering idolaters who find freedom in dying to our old selves and receiving new life from Jesus.
The best news of all is that there are no qualifications for this Jesus journey except being completely unqualified. Here at Edgewood we are not into fancy clothes and fake smiles because Jesus is not into that mess. We are into reality and the name of reality is Jesus.
If you have never started on the Jesus way, there will be a time of response now when you can come and talk with one of our pastors about a next step you can take. They won’t pressure you, but they will listen and pray with you. If you have been a Christian for a long time but you are still bothered by hurts, habits, and hangups that are keeping you from having peace and hope in your life, you can come talk to me about attending a Christian 12-step group that I go to every Sunday evening I’m in town. It’s called “Celebrate Recovery.” If you don’t have transportation, I’ll get you there.
Just don’t walk out of here with the same burdens you brought in with you. Jesus is here to set you free.