[00:31:14] Anthony: Let’s transition to our next passage. It’s Romans 6:1b–11. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 7 in Ordinary Time, June 21.
What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, so we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For whoever has died is freed from sin. 8 But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Verse 6 tells us, Matt, if the old self has been crucified, that’s been done. So why does sin persist? If we are no longer slaves to sin, why do we often feel, at least on a very subjective level, enslaved to sin? What’s going on here?
[00:32:52] Matt: I think to answer this, if I can tell a quick story. The War of 1812 — which frankly no one knows anything about — we’re post American Revolution. The British start to reassert some authority. They’re like, impressing American sailors into the British Navy. And the US, and there’s some shipping issues with taking cargo off boats. And the US government gets fed up with it, starts setting some ultimatums, and it results in the War of 1812, a second American revolution.
The most significant battle in the War of 1812 is the battle of New Orleans. It’s what makes Andrew Jackson famous. It occurs on January 8th, 1815, and the date is important. I’m going to say that again. January 8th, 1815. The treaty that ends the War of 1812 is the Treaty of Ghent in the Netherlands. It’s in modern-day Belgium. The treaty signed on December 24th, 1814. So, the war ends December 24th, 1814, but yet the most significant battle of this war is two weeks later on January 8th, 1815. How does that happen?
[00:34:03] Anthony: Yeah.
[00:34:04] Matt: They didn’t know. It takes a long time to get an update from a treaty convention in Ghent Netherlands to the North American continent. The battle happens because none of the parties involved in the conflict were aware the war was over.
People don’t know is I think my first answer. I have two answers to it. That’s the first. People don’t know. They’re not aware that sin has been defeated. Our entire culture is inundated with good and evil paradigms that speak of them as one equal, as if good and evil are thrown into a boxing match and you’re not quite sure who’s going to come out. Sometimes it’ll be good and sometimes it’ll be evil.
But our theology, particularly in North America, is heavily influenced in this idea that you are still a decrepit, vile creation sitting before a God who, much more so a judge than a Father, can barely look at you but somehow because of Jesus as Advocate, he can now look at you in a fondness or a toleration. That is just going to skirt you through to heaven.
When you inundate people with that message through television, through sermons, through its infiltration within our culture as a whole, even those who don’t necessarily hold to a Christian faith — it nevertheless is Christendom versus Christianity — that’s a tough nut to crack.
And so, that would be my first response. I think the vast majority of even Christians are not aware this is done. And so, we do tend to behave in a manner in keeping with what we believe to be true.
Anthony: Yes.
Matt: So, if you believe that you are just a miserable wretch for whom every moment is a cataclysmic choice that you better make the right one or else there are substantive post-death penalties as opposed to the penalties that just naturally exist in life without God’s intervention —God’s not directing those penalties. It’s just the innate nature of cause and effect. If you own a business and you routinely are scamming people, eventually you’re going to lose your business because no one wants to do business with you. That’s not God punishing you for being a crook. That’s just the natural consequence of being a crook in the world.
But the other answer would be trauma. Wounds remain long after actual wounding is over. I had surgery about a month ago and the surgical cut that produced pain I was knocked out for, I didn’t feel anything. That was but a moment, probably took the surgeon 10 minutes at most to make the incision, but the process of healing from that, of the pain associated with that cut, took two to three weeks. It’s not that he was cutting me that entire time. But the shadows of that wounding were still present.
We, even among those who maybe have some awareness that sin truly has been defeated, that the tether that bound it to the creation has been severed, still tend to believe the shadows. We still tend to give our agreement to again this belief that we are in control of our destinies, that our actions are the means by which the world moves. And I, again, I think this is where an element of formation comes in that lets us learn how to hold two things as true at once, that we can objectively be completely and totally disconnected from sin and subsequently then the outgrowth of sin — death, and yet there are still parts of us that have not seen the light of Christ. And we remain in need of encounters with the great Physician.
Salvation, as a concept again, this fundamentalist argument that it’s a one and done light switch moment, you say a prayer, you are now saved, and nothing is now capable of touching you — it does not seem well-versed within Scripture itself, but certainly not even within the first exegetes of Scripture within the early church.
They tended to view salvation as this accomplished act, that you nevertheless live out in every moment of your life, that every moment of your life, you are in need of a deliverer. You need your creators sitting with you in that moment, navigating life with, for, and as you … we are not truly free.
I can use a movie reference. Shawshank Redemption …
Anthony: Oh, come on.
Matt: … features these guys. What, there’s never a wrong time …
Anthony: Never.
Matt: … to make a Shawshank Redemption reference. But I think about the character Brooks Hatlen. Brooks is a librarian in the prison. He’s a man of importance. He’s educated. And he is in prison for killing someone when he’s very young. We are encountering him in the movie. He’s quite elderly. He’s in his late 70s at the youngest. He’s been in there almost 50 years. He’s released. The parole board lets him out. He is free. The second the parole board signature hits that form, he is a free man.
Yet, we find him really struggle with assimilating back to a world that in 50 years had changed dramatically, and is nothing like the regulated world he had been living in for the past half century. What I ask students when this subject comes up is, okay, was Brooks Hatlen free? And the only right answer, honestly, is yes and no.
He is free objectively. The parole board signed, it’s done. That is the finished, accomplished work of Christ within our analogy. It is settled. It is done. And yet there is a subjective experience with this that each and every person has to journey in order for it to feel and be real to them.
Creation has been pulled into the salvation of God. In that sense Karl Barth’s statement — a student asked him, “When were you saved?” And his response was, basically, he says it much more colorfully, but it’s basically, “When Jesus was crucified, that was the moment.” A Thursday, 2000 years ago or something, Friday, 2000 years ago — that is true and yet I can still live a life that is nothing but misery and confusion and distorted thinking and horrific, self-destructive decisions because I can’t see it. And so, to me, until our objective fact and truth align with our subjective experience, we are missing out. To overtly place focus on the objective and deny the need for subjective wholeness too leaves us with a very interesting theology, but it also puts all of our hope in an afterlife heaven and we’re just trying to survive day to day.
[00:41:34] Anthony: Yeah.
[00:41:35] Matt: Rather than being truly whole.
[00:41:37] Anthony: Yeah.
[00:41:37] Matt: Truly.
[00:41:38] Anthony: This whole conversation reminds me of a quote out of the book, Prophetic Imagination, from Walter Brueggemann, and he said, “When we live according to our fears and our hates, our lives become small and defensive lacking the deep, joyous generosity of God.” And I just think if our subjective experience doesn’t align with objective reality, this is what can happen.
Our lives just get really small and defensive, just trying to protect ourselves from all the outside forces. And ah, it’s so beautiful when the light comes on, when we, when the light, what I mean by that is, when a person comes to know what has already been true about them from eternity past to eternity future, that they are loved and God is inviting us just to come on and join him in this good work, that we’re no longer slaves to sin, but also recognizing as Martin Luther said that old wretch has a way of swimming even though he died, he didn’t always drown and we see sin pop up its head.
So, what, Matt, what is it theologically and practically — and by the way, good theology is always hyper-practical; I don’t see a distinction in the two — but what does it mean to consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus?
[00:43:10] Matt: I think it means to really lean into Galatians 2:20 and this idea that we have been consumed enveloped, adopted into the fullness of Christ’s humanity that we are now overshadowed. There is now a new sheriff in town. There is a new governing order of the world that frankly enjoys our participation, but is not dependent on our participation, that God is capable of being God without us, but doesn’t want to be. I think to put it just in, in a sentence, it’s to so completely identify with the humanity of Christ Jesus that our being can only be found in him.
[00:43:40] Anthony:
[00:43:41] Matt: That I can’t look at my behavior as being the core tenet of who I am. I can’t look at my education. I can’t look at my relationships. I can’t look at my family. All I can look to is that I am found in him, that whatever life I perceived myself as having apart from him has been crucified with him, and that the life I now live in this fleshly human body is his, not just as possessive, but as participation, that it is me participating in the fullness of who he is. The more I have sat with that idea, that principle, the more I have seen my own rough edges gently be sandpapered away, without, and honestly, without a lot of conscious effort …
[00:44:38] Anthony: Yeah.
[00:44:39] Matt: … or even focused awareness but just the simple, as I emphasize and get a better understanding of who I am in light of what Christ has done, the more I am able to see what is actually true of me, and that, that’s basic CBT therapy. As my awareness changes, it spills over into my conduct. Theologically metanoia, right? There’s this change in perception. You don’t see the way you did before, you see something new, but it doesn’t stop there. I don’t just see a new way, but continue to do everything the way I did before when I saw differently. No, it informs my conduct now, often subconsciously.
[00:45:23] Anthony: Yeah. Amen and amen.