January 20 - Romans 6:11-14 - Baptism - We offer our bodies as instruments of righteousness

You’re home from the car dealer. You’ve made your choice. And it’s sitting out in your driveway. It’s the color you wanted. It’s the model you were looking for. It has the power you really need. It’s sparkling clean inside and out, and it even has that new car smell. You have everything you need to get out on the road and take a trip, go to the store, visit a friend. To drive.

But there it sits, in your drive way, not going anywhere. It looks good. It has the capability to drive well, to get you where you want to go. But you don’t go anywhere. You don’t open the door. You don’t get in. You don’t put the key in the ignition. You don’t start it up. You don’t put it into gear. And you don’t drive.

There’s a lot of reasons why the car might just sit in the driveway. Maybe you’re not sure the car will do what it’s supposed to. You’ve had other cars in the past, cars that broke down and left you stranded on the side of the road. And you’re not going to let that happen again. Sure, this is a brand new car, just checked out at the factory. There’s nothing wrong with it, but you’re just not really sure. It’s just safer to stay in the house and look at the car from the window. It’s just better not to drive it.

Or maybe you’re a little embarrassed. You know, you don’t want people gawking at you as you drive, maybe talking about you behind your back. Actually, maybe you should drive the car into the garage, so people don’t really see it anymore.

You have a great car. It could do so much. And there it sits, doing nothing. Looking good, but going nowhere.

That’s a sad description of how we see the new life of Christ. It has all the power we need. We could really go somewhere with it. We have Christ living in us, and the possibilities are endless. But there we sit, looking good but going nowhere. And probably for the same reasons. We’re not really sure if it’s going to work. What if we take a risk for Jesus, and He leave us hanging? What if we try to obey, and it just blows up in our face?

Or maybe we’re embarrassed. We have Jesus in us, we have this life. But we can’t let it show. People will talk, especially people who have known us for a long time. They’ll doubt whether we mean what we say. They’ll doubt our authenticity. They’ll think we’re faking it, putting on a show. Or maybe they’ll think we’re wanting to be big stuff, holier than everybody else. We don’t want that, so we leave our Christianity, our new life, parked in the garage where it looks good but it doesn’t go anywhere.

If we’re satisfied with having our Christianity, but not going anywhere with it, if we feel like we’ve arrived, then there’s something wrong with our Christianity. Something’s not running right. A relationship with Jesus always includes the question, what’s next? What do you want me to do next? What do you want me to learn next? How do you want me to serve now? Where do you want me to go?

Christianity is always extreme Christianity. There is no middle of the road, normal, average Christianity. Either we’re going places, being stretched, out there, or we’re stuck in the drive way with our brand new life.

Now maybe these words sound scary. Maybe they sound tiring. They seem like a burden, and life is heavy enough. I say these words, and I make Christianity to be all about working and busyness and productivity.

That’s not what Christianity is all about. Being a Christian is about Jesus living in our bodies. Being a Christian means Jesus is living our lives, we are living Jesus life. We are Christians when we have been united with Jesus in His death and united with Jesus in His life.

Now, when we are living Jesus’ life, when we are united with Jesus in His life, we can’t imagine the stuff we’ll do and the places we’ll go. Our lives will be incredibly productive for God. But only if we die to ourselves first.

This is the road we’ve taken the past few weeks. Two weeks ago, we died to sin. We were buried. Our selves, our personalities, our egos, our demands. They’re all dead and in the ground. Our fears, our resistance, our excuses, every reason we have to not follow Jesus wherever He goes, all of that went out with the trash and is buried in the garbage dump.

And in their place is Jesus. Instead of our selves, our strength, our personalities, we now have Jesus’ self, Jesus’ strength, Jesus’ personality. Instead of our wisdom, which is guaranteed to fail, we have Jesus’ wisdom, which is guaranteed to succeed. His courage replaces our fears. His love replaces our grudge. His life instead of our life. Jesus, instead of us.

So, now that our old life is gone and Jesus’ new life is in us, where do we go? Verse 11:

We want to be alive…to…God. We live to God. Everything in our lives is pointed in God’s direction. Like the compass of our choices is always pointing due Godward, directly towards God. We want what God wants when it comes to business, how much money we invest into machinery, how much time we spend on the job. We want what God wants when it comes to play, what do we do for fun, how much money do we spend on fun. We want what God wants in how we do marriage, how much time, and what kind of time we reserve for our wives, our husbands. Do they get prime time, fully aware time, or do they get yawning time, left over time?

Everything we do, everything we think, everything we say has the shadow of God hanging over it, influencing it, directing it. Verse 12:

And this is the core, the point, the message that Paul wants to get across in Romans 6. We don’t have to sin anymore. We don’t have to obey evil desires. We only think we have to. We only think that sin is stronger than we are. We only think we have to live with it, because there’s not a lot we can do about it.

We can be free, we can be pure, we can be holy, we can do the right thing. There is no reason why we need to sin. Romans 6 teaches us this. Our baptisms reinforce this. We can dump the old. We can live the new.

So, verse 13:

And this is where the fun begins. Instead of our bodies and minds being used for evil, they start to be used for incredible good. When our eyes stop looking at pictures we really shouldn’t be looking at, now our eyes can be used to see hurting people and do something to help them. When our mouths stop spreading gossip, our lips can be used for encouragement. When our minds stop trying to figure out what we can do for ourselves, how we can make our own lives better, then our minds can be used to think about others, and their needs. When we stop using our bodies as instruments of wickedness, we can, verse 13:

This is where we hit the road and really go places. When we have died to ourselves and Jesus lives inside of us, when we have completely surrendered ourselves over to whatever God wants us to do, we will do amazing things. That complete surrender, that total release, the death of our selves makes way for God’s power, and just watch what He’s going to do.

First, He’s going to bring you to some incredible places in your relationship with Him. He will make you deeply aware of Him. Your knowledge, your perception of His presence will grow stronger. You’ll know Him in your immediate surroundings. You’ll know Him around you more often. The time between time with God will grow shorter and shorter until you are constantly talking to Him, considering Him, working with Him. He is a constant presence, once our own selves have been buried.

But it’s not going to stop with us. Complete surrender, the death of ourselves, leads us to actions we never would have thought possible in the past. We will do things that seemed impossible before. We will teach a Sunday School class, and we never thought we’d be able to do that. We will serve as an elder, as a deacon, and that seemed like the last thing we’d ever do. We will get up in front of church and lead a part of the worship service, pray, sing a song, maybe bring a message.

The life of Jesus inside you will lead you out there, sometimes to some uncomfortable situations. Jesus’ life has led some of us to ministry in the jail. And His life might just lead you there too. For some of us, going to a nursing home is pretty uncomfortable. The smells, or maybe thoughts of the future, keep us as far away as we can. But the eternal, powerful life of Jesus actually moves us to go and visit, or to lead the worship service we do on the fifth Sundays of the month.

His life and His love and His compassion will lead us to people, hurting people, sometimes people who make us uncomfortable. He will bring us into contact with people who are angry at the church, and anyone connected with the church. And He will use us to show them that church people love people. That church is not a place that judges and condemns, but a place where sinners come to encourage one another and worship the God of grace. With Jesus’ life in us, we will come to know people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. And because we have Jesus’ compassion in us, along with His determination to not quit, we will walk with them through the ups and downs, and we won’t give up on them. We won’t save them, we’ll just love them.

With Jesus’ power, His character in us, we will do amazing things. We will live an extreme Christianity, as instruments of righteousness.

Now sometimes, maybe, our instruments will get dull. Our fears will keep us from trusting God. We think that we’re not capable of doing some of these things, even though we know that it would be good to do them. Our own judgments of people keep us from being any good to them, keep us from being instruments of righteousness. We’d rather talk about them than help them. We’d rather stay safe than take righteous risks. Our awareness of God starts to get a little dim, and the time between times with God starts to get longer and longer. And we start to look more and more like ourselves, and less and less like Jesus.

And then, it’s time to die again. Our old selves started to come back to life. It’s time to get them reburied. So, we go back. We take some time away. We spend time with Jesus, surrendering each part of our life, turning over our expectations, our dreams, our children, our retirements, our paychecks, our recreation time, our hobbies, our everything, our lives. We come back to our baptisms, to be confirmed that we have been buried with Christ in baptism, through faith, and we’ve been made alive in His life.

When we’ve spent enough time dying to ourselves, we get back to being alive. The more time we spend surrendering our lives, the more alive we become. If we’re not alive in our Christianity, then we haven’t died enough to ourselves. The excitement and energy of our Christian life is directly related to the death of our own selves.

This dying and rising happens in a cycle. There will be times when we are excited and energetic and really out there, doing things. And then there will be times when our Christianity is sitting in the driveway, doing nothing. These cycles are normal, because we haven’t yet been made perfect. Don’t get down on yourself if you’re not doing this perfectly, if you’re not as holy as you think you ought to be. Just go die again. Turn yourself over to your Lord, again. We don’t get ourselves to do good things. Jesus does. We don’t make ourselves alive. He does. Being instruments of righteousness is not a command you need to follow. Being instruments of righteousness is a life you’re allowed to live. Verse 14:

We have died, buried with Christ in baptism. We are alive, united with Jesus in life. We think, we act, we talk, we decide, we live the life of Jesus.