Almighty God,
In Your great love for us You have given us the very life of
Your Beloved Son and through our Baptism into the death, burial and Resurrection
of Your Son You have given us victory over sin and death and new life through
the regenerative power of God the Holy Spirit. We have died to sin and have
been raised to new life, no longer orphans in the family of Adam but true and
holy children in Your family, Lord. Give us the strength and the courage to
daily die to self and to live for Christ. Bless us Lord, as we study the words
You gave to St. Paul to strengthen us on our journey toward eternal life. We
pray in the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
+ + +
“As Jesus died in
taking away the sins of the world, that, by doing sin to death, he might rise in
righteousness, so too, when you go down into the water [of baptism] and
are, in a fashion, entombed in the water as he was in the rock, you may rise
again to walk in newness of life.” St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical
Lectures 3:12
“In him in bodily
form, lives divinity in all its fullness, and in him you too find your own
fulfillment, in the one who is the head of every sovereignty and ruling force.
In him you have been circumcised, with a circumcision performed, not by human
hand, but by the complete stripping of your natural self. This is circumcision
according to Christ. You have been buried with him by your baptism; by which,
too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God
who raised him from the dead. You were dead, because you were sinners and
uncircumcised in body: he has brought you to life in him, he has forgiven us
every one of our sins. He has wiped out the record of our debt to the Law,
which stood against us; he has destroyed it by nailing it to the cross.” Colossians
2:9-14
Chapter 5 ended with the statement: “But however much sin
increased, grace was always greater; so that as sin’s reign brought death, so
grace was to rule through saving justice that leads to eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord.” 5:21
Question: What is Paul’s point and what does this have
to do with Adam’s sin? Hint: see Genesis
2:15-17.
Answer: In Genesis
2:15-17, God established Adam’s Covenant obligations in which Adam and his
bride were forbidden to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
(‘eshadda’t tob wara): “Yahweh God took the man and settled him in the
Garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it. Then Yahweh gave the man this
command, ‘You are free to eat of all the trees in the garden. But of the tree
of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you are not to eat; for the day you eat of
that, you are doomed to die (die).'” The literal Hebrew text actually
repeats the verb “die”. While it is true that in Hebrew there are no
superlatives and that words are emphasized by repeating the word, in this case
the disobedience of Adam and Eve did indeed yield a double death.
Question: What was the double death inflicted upon all
humanity through the sin of Adam and Eve?
Answer: Spiritual death and physical death.
Paul’s point is before the sin of Adam there was no physical
death, but the fact that everyone physically dies since the time of Adam is the
proof that all humanity was affected by the universal dominion or reign of sin:
“sin’s reign brought death” [5:21]. We have
mentioned previously that this first sin committed by our first parents is
called “original sin” and is inherited by all children born into the family of
Adam [see CCC #215; 404; 412; 390, 97-98]. Vatican II
explains the affect of original sin as the cause of death to man in the document
Gaudium et spes which states: “The Church, taught by divine
Revelation, declares that God has created man in view of a blessed destiny that
lies beyond the limits of his sad state on earth. Moreover, the Christian faith
teaches that bodily death, from which man would have been immune had he not
sinned [cf. Wisdom 1:13; 2:23-24; Romans 5:21; 6:23; James 1:15], will
be overcome when that wholeness which he lost through his own fault will be
given once again to him by the almighty and merciful Savior. For God has called
man, and still calls him, to cleave with all his being to him in sharing for
ever a life that is divine and free from all decay” Gaudium et spes, 18
[The Documents of Vatican II].
Paul, however, assures us in this passage [and will continue
to assure us in chapter 6] that sin is not the victor over humanity. At the
appointed time God the Father sent the Son so that “grace was to rule through
saving justice (righteousness) that leads to eternal life through Jesus Christ
our Lord.”
Please read Romans 6:1-11:
The Regeneration of Baptism
“1 What should
we say then? Should we remain in sin so that grace may be given the more
fully? 2 Out of the question! We
have died to sin; how could we go on living in it? 3 You cannot have forgotten that all of us, when
we were baptized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into his death. 4 So by our baptism into his death we were buried
with him, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glorious
power, we too should begin living a new life. 5 If we have been joined to him by dying a death
like his, so we shall be by resurrection like his; 6 realizing that our former self was crucified
with him, so that the self which belonged to sin should be destroyed and we
should be freed from the slavery of sin. 7
Someone who has died, of course, no longer has to answer for sin.
8 But we believe that, if we died
with Christ, then we shall love with him too. 9 We know that Christ has been raised from the
dead and will never die again. Death has no power over him any more.
10 For by dying, he is dead to sin
once and for all, and now the life that he lives is life with God. 11 In the same way, you must see yourselves as
being dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus.”
In Romans 6:1 St.
Paul takes us back to the question he raised in Romans 3:5-8,
“But if our injustice serves to bring God’s saving justice into view, can we
say that God is unjust when’to use human terms’he brings his retribution down on
us? Out of the question! It would mean that God could not be the judge of the
world. You might as well say that if my untruthfulness makes God demonstrate
his truthfulness, to his greater glory then I should not be judged to be a
sinner at all. In this case, the slanderous report some people are spreading
would be true, that we teach that one should do evil that good may come of it.”
In other words Paul was asking in Romans 3:5-8 and again
here in 6:1-2, “Should
we sin more so that God’s grace can come to us in greater abundance?” The
rhetorical question suggests, “How can sin be a problem if it leads us to
greater forgiveness?”
Question: How does Paul address this notion in Romans
6:11? Does
the gift of grace give us freedom to sin?
Answer: Paul vehemently rejects this notion in 6:11.
Grace does not mean freedom to sin! If one has died to sin through the Baptism
of Jesus Christ, and if one is in union with the life of Christ then one is
“dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus,” and, therefore, reasons
Paul, sin becomes foreign to the life of the re-born believer.
Question: How is it that Paul tells us God’s abundant
grace reaches us? What is the effect of this infusion of grace? See Romans
6:3-4.
Answer: Through the Sacrament of Baptism we receive
God’s grace which frees us from the control of and slavery to sin. The
entomological meaning of the word “baptize” is “dip” or “immerse”. Immersion
was a common practice in the Old Covenant for ritual purification and for
conversion [i.e John the Baptizer’s immersion for repentance] but our immersion
in the Baptism of Christ goes far beyond ritual
symbolism.
Question: When one receives the Sacrament of Baptism
what supernatural sequence of events takes place which images the life of
Christ? See Colossians
2:9-14 and John
3:3-8; CCC# 628; 977-978
Answer:
- The believer dies to sin and therefore blameworthiness
dies’we die to sin by renouncing sin and its power over us and being freed of
its hold on our lives. We image Christ in this death to sin just as He died to
free us from sin on the Cross.
- We are born “again” or “from above”; the Hebrew word
onothan can mean either “again” or “from above” [see John chapter 3]. Our
hearts are supernaturally “circumcised” and we are resurrection out of the
waters of Baptism to a new life’no longer a child of Adam we become children in
the family of God, imaging Christ’s Resurrection from the tomb and fulfilling
God’s promise to make all things new through the New Covenant in Christ: Revelation
21:5-7, “Then the One sitting on the throne spoke. ‘Look, I am making
the whole of creation new. Write this, ‘What I am saying is trustworthy and
will come true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It has already happened. I am the Alpha
and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give water from the well of
life free to anybody who is thirsty’ and I will be his God and he will be my
son.”
- Baptism imparts the life of Christ’s grace and, therefore,
original sin and all personal sins are forgiven through the cleansing waters of
Baptism in the regeneration and infusion of divine life by the power of God the
Holy Spirit.
[However, concupiscence, the
tendency to sin remained, see CCC# 978]
St. Ambrose, in his instruction to the newly baptized on the
Sacrament of Baptism, taught, “The Lord who wanted his benefactions to
endure, the serpent’s plans to be turned to naught, and the harm done to be put
right, delivered a sentence on mankind: ‘You are dust, and to dust you shall
return’ (Genesis
3:19), and made man subject to death.” Then, as St. Ambrose continues,
God in His mercy provided a remedy: “The remedy was given him: man would die
and rise again…. You ask me how? Answering his own question St. Ambrose
informed the newly Baptized, “Pay attention! So that in this world too the
devil’s snare would be broken, a rite was instituted whereby man would die,
being alive, and rise again, being alive….Through immersion in water the
sentence is blotted out: ‘You are dust and to dust you shall return.'” St.
Ambrose writing on the Sacrament of Baptism, De Sacramentis, II,6
Question: What else does Paul teach concerning being
baptized into Christ’s death in his other letters? What role did the old Law of
Moses play in anticipation of our baptism? Is baptism only a symbolic death?
Hint: see Galatians
3:27-28; 1
Corinthians 12:12-13; Colossians
2:9-14; Ephesians
4:4-6.
Answer: The old Law served as a tutor or a guardian [
see CCC# 1963] so
that God’s covenant people would be prepared to be reborn into the family of God
as the true spiritual heirs of Abraham and members of the One Body in Christ,
the New Covenant Church:
- Galatians
3:25-28: “But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the Law,
locked up to wait for the faith which would eventually be revealed to us. So
the Law was serving as a salve to look after us, to lead us to Christ, so that
we could be justified by faith. But now that faith has come we are no longer
under a slave looking after us; all of you are the children of God, through
faith, in Christ Jesus, since every one of you that has been baptized has been
clothed in Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither
salve nor freeman, there can be neither male nor female’for you are all one in
Christ Jesus. And simply by being Christ’s, you are that progeny of Abraham, the
heirs named in the promise.” - Colossians
2:9-14: “In him in bodily form, lives divinity in all its fullness, and
in him you too find your own fulfillment, in the one who is the head of every
sovereignty and ruling force. In him you have been circumcised, with a
circumcision performed, not by human hand, but by the complete stripping of your
natural self. This is circumcision according to Christ. You have been buried
with him by your baptism; by which, too, you have been raised up with him
through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead. You were
dead, because you were sinners and uncircumcised in body: he has brought you to
life in him, he has forgiven us every one of our sins. He has wiped out the
record of our debt to the Law, which stood against us; he has destroyed it by
nailing it to the cross.” - 1 1
Corinthians 12:12-13: “For as with the human body which is a unity
although it has many parts’all the parts of the body, though many, still making
up one single body’so it is with Christ. We were baptized into one body in a
single Spirit, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as free men, and we were
all given the same Spirit to drink.” - Ephesians
4:4-6: “There is one Body, one Spirit, just as one hope is the goal of
your calling by God. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and
Father of all, over all, through all and within all.”
Baptism is not merely a symbolic
death and rebirth but is a genuine participation in Christ’s saving
mission’death, burial, and Resurrection as figured in water immersion [death and
burial], and coming “up” out of the water [Resurrection].
Question: What promise does Paul make that affects our
future in 6:5? Also see
1 Peter 1:3-5
Answer: Paul promises in Romans 6:5 that
if we have been united to Christ in a death like His, through our Baptism, and
raised to a new life like His Resurrection, then we will also be united with Him
in the final Resurrection of the righteous dead at the end of time.
Question: What is the result of our Baptismal
Resurrection that looks forward to the final Resurrection? Hint: see Romans 6:4-11;
the literal translation of 6:4 is that
“we in newness of life might walk.”
Answer: The result is that we should “walk” or live in
“newness of life” and that the “self” that belonged to sin should be destroyed
and we should be freed from sin.
Question: In Biblical terms “walking with God” refers
to righteous behavior in the sight of God [see Genesis 17:1;
48:15; Deuteronomy
5:33; 8:6;
1 Kings
3:14; Psalms
86:11; 119:1; etc.].
What does “newness” point toward? See 2
Corinthians 5:17; Galatians
6:14-16; Colossians
3:10-11. How does this “newness” image what was lost to humanity in the
Fall?
Answer: the Baptized believer as a new creation in
Christ. Col
3:10: “You have stripped off your old behavior with your old self, and
you have put on a new self which will progress towards true knowledge the more
it is renewed in the image of its Creator.” The human race was created in
the image and likeness of God [Genesis
1:26-27]. But the family of Adam became lost in trying to see knowledge and
wisdom apart from the will of God [Genesis 2:17]
and became slaves of sin. This is the “old self” [Romans 6:6] that
must die. It is the “new self” that is reborn through the waters of baptism
into Christ who is the true image of God and who has come to restore fallen
humanity to the splendor of that image that had been stained and distorted by
sin.
In Romans 6:5-10
Paul focuses on Christian conformity to the life of Christ. He makes an
argument in two steps, beginning each step with a conditional statement in verse 5 and
again in verse
8. Each statement expresses a hope that we believe will become a reality
through the promises of Jesus Christ. The argument is centered on the
Christian’s conformity to the ethical pattern of Christ’s death, burial, and
Resurrection which brought about a release from slavery to sin and God’s wrath
and His glorious Resurrection to new life:
-
Conditional statement #1, verse 5: “If
we have been joined to him by a death like his…à “so we shall be by a resurrection
like his..” -
Conditional statement #2, verse 8: “if
we died with Christ…”à
“then we shall live with him too.”
Question: According to Paul what happens to our former
life when we are baptized? What is freedom to the Christian? See Romans
6:5-6?
Answer: Our old self is crucified with Christ. The new
life the believer is called to live is not only a freedom from sin but a freedom
from “self”. See verse 6:
“..our former self is crucified with him, so that the self which belonged to
sin should be destroyed and we should be freed from the slavery of sin.”