In the twenty-first
verse of this chapter, we read that “as sin reigned in death, grace also might
reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord.” Paul is quite emphatic and insistent. He repeats
himself. He continues to point to the sin of Adam, saying that the
evidence of the reign of sin, of faithlessness to God’s covenant and its
associated commands, is death. He adds that the evidence of the reign of
grace, the reign of Christ, is eternal life.
That eternal life---the life of the age to come as a member of the
covenant people becomes the place of the overlap of heaven and earth, bringing
the life of the age to come into the present age---is manifested through the
confession of Jesus as Lord and a life that conforms to that confession.
Do we believe
it? Do we truly believe that the Christ reigns in this life, in our
lives, in this world? Do we truly believe that Jesus is Lord, or is it
something to which we merely pay lip service so as to avoid the punishment of
hell’s fire upon our shaking off of this mortal coil? If we believe these
things, then we must confidently declare that we are being made to share in
eternal life in this moment, as these words are read. If we believe these
things, then it is evidence of the Holy Spirit’s working, sharing the power of
Christ’s Resurrection, to create the union with Christ that is the belief in
and confession of Jesus as Lord and King and Master and Savior and Ruler.
If we believe these things, then we have, participate in, and demonstrate eternal
life, and we share that eternal life with this world through our engagement in
the proclamation of the Gospel, in the making of disciples, and in all that we
do as we do it in the name of the King.
With no arbitrary
divisions in the original text, Paul moves seamlessly from the fifth to the
sixth chapters of Romans. There we read, “We 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” (6:4).
So much hope! So much grace! Why do we bury that hope, and in
the process of that burial, deny the great miracle of Christ’s
Resurrection? The promise is that “just as Christ was raised from the
dead…we too might walk in newness of life.” What does that mean if not
what it says? When we use terms like “just as,” what we are communicating
is “in the same way” and “just like.”
So, just like Christ,
in the same way that Christ was raised from the dead, so too will we be raised
from the dead. Just as Christ was completely restored and given a
Resurrection body, right here in the midst of God’s creation, so too will each
one of us that finds himself or herself as a part of God’s covenant
people. How do we know if we are a part of that group of people? If
we find ourselves saying “Jesus is Lord,” and therefore believing in Christ and
the Gospel about Him, then we are part of that group, being moved to that
belief through the working of the Holy Spirit, and so evidencing the possession
of the faith that is to be possessed by the covenant people, which also stands
as evidence of our sharing in eternal life.
A new, resurrected
body, in the midst of God’s creation. That is our hope. A
restoration from the state of futility and corruption to which it was
unwillingly and through no fault of its own, but through the fall of the one to
whom it was given over in dominion, that is the hope for which the entire
creation groans, looking forward to the enjoyment of the same freedom
(re-birth, salvation) that is experienced by those who are called the children
of God. If we deny this as God’s intention for His people and His
creation, and live in nothing more than an escapist dream in which we do not
look forward to a new body in a renewed physicality, but simply speak only of
heaven as the place where we will put on immortality and where the perishable
puts on the imperishable, then we might as well deny that Christ rose bodily
from the grave.
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