"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin;how can we live in it any longer? 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." -Romans 6:1-4

In writing on these verses I feel obligated to begin by again confessing to being a "recovering legalist."

By that I mean that for far too many years as a believer I tended to look at the sin, whether small or great, which I observed in professed Christians with a negative and self-righteous attitude. All too often I conflated, if perhaps only subconsciously, the transgression with the transgressor. In other words I judged people as well as their actions.

Being very aware of that history I feel I need to approach these verses in Romans carefully and, I hope, under the influence of the Spirit.

With that said, I must state that it is apparent to even a casual observer that we live in a time when the surrounding culture does not use the word "sin" very much anymore, except possibly for its comic value. To the world of 2020 it is a word that, in its true meaning, is at best old-fashioned and at worst offensive. In a rapidly de-Christianizing society this does not strike me as particularly surprising. What I find more troubling is that the term has fallen out of use in many of our churches as well. It sometimes seems like the 21st century Church, at least in the Western world, has "demonized" legalism while largely forgetting about its equal and opposite error, license, the idea that breaking God's moral law, especially in what we might consider "small" ways, is no big deal. Mention "sin" and many people's first response is to shift uncomfortably in their church seats and think "wait a second, am I about to be judged?"

The problem is that sin is a big deal to God, and bringing it, albeit humbly, to people's consciousness is something the Body of Christ is called to do. Romans 6:1-4 is only one of many New Testament verses that remind us that personal holiness, on every level, is something for which all followers of Jesus are to strive, to quote part of Hebrews 12, "without holiness no one will see the Lord." That means consciously and actively putting to death the sins we see in ourselves, or which others lovingly show us. It also means we need to "sweat the small stuff" as well as the "big." As Romans here tells us "We are those who have died to sin;how can we live in it any longer?" That means all types of sins, not just the more obvious ones like murder and adultery.

There are a number of reasons I believe this to be an ongoing problem in the Western Church, but I will only address two here. The first is the fact that we tend to let the culture influence us these days more than we influence it. The second directly relates to the first: many of us do not have a deep and abiding knowledge of Scripture, the kind that is only acquired by reading it deeply and often. The bottom line is that it is hard to "not go on sinning" if we don't even know what sin is or, if we do know, not remind ourselves of what it is often. if we are not in the Bible on a daily basis we will likely more and more drift towards the world's way of doing things, and the world (in the sense of fallen humankind) is often in direct and flagrant conflict with God and the things of God. 

I see this very phenomenon in my own life. The less I'm in the Word, and other spiritual disciplines, the more likely I am to sin against God and others. It is simply an enduring reality of living out the Christian life that is true for me no less than it is for anyone else. If I don't stay close to our lord then I drift away from Him and then I find myself being anything but personally holy. A couple of years ago I realized that my ridiculously short and often random morning devotions in Scripture were completely inadequate with which to start my day. Since then I have set a specific and longer time in the morning to spend seriously reading and studying God's Word. While it hasn't turned me into some sort of "super-saint" (just ask my wife) I do believe it has helped me to keep both my life and my ministry more free of that drift into doing the wrong I just mentioned.

By the way the power to read the Bible longer or more often does not come from our flesh, it comes from our spirit's ongoing, progressive surrendering of itself to the Spirit. How, you may ask, do we do that? 

Well let me end with what I think is the answer from today's verses:

"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."

In Christ we find the resurrection power to "live a new life," one marked by a true personal holiness that only comes through a continuing daily conscious appropriation of that power so that "we too may live a new life."