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“Once
For All”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Romans 6:3-11
“The death he died, he died to
sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.”
DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS the two most fascinating Sundays for us are
Christmas and Easter. It is
so astonishing for us to hear over and over again about the Godly
miracles of the Son of God coming from even above heaven; passing
through heaven onto this planet, and being born as one of us.
He is the most unique person of the whole human history.
Then in our time of history, almost 2000 years ago, after
spending his early years being a carpenter with his family dad, he came
to fully know He is the Son of God the Father.
He learned God the Father’s main heart desire, His true
Father’s personal commitment to you, me, and each and every one of us.
So, out of the reality of God as love, he gave himself over to
the attack of death by sin and was then raised from the death, brought
back to eternal life and went home to be with our Heavenly Father.
There are no miraculous stories anywhere in our history anything
like these.
And here we are, again in church, wanting to hear this more, deeper in
our hearts, and hoping it will affect our faith, so we may be more at
peace with all the issues
we have in our lives. The
last verse we read from St. Paul was, “So
you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ
Jesus.”
I remember when, by God, I was being brought into the Christian faith.
I was a freshman in college, and soon after my Baptism in the
Presbyterian Church, I stood in front of a mirror, in my room.
I looked into my own eyes and thought to myself, or maybe it was
even a prayer, “What does it mean that Jesus Christ is in me?”
That has been a great question in my whole Christian life. And the Apostle Paul is basically telling us, “Go to the
mirror in you room, look at yourself, into your own eyes, and say to
your self, _(Name)_ you are dead to sin and your real life, forever, is
with Jesus Christ as a
child of God the Father. That
is truly who you are”
We are already dead to sin; what in the world does that mean?
For most of us, we often think of sin as that in us which often
leads us to break some of God’s laws.
When we think about the Ten Commandments, and Jesus’ teaching
from then Sermon on the Mount, that if we even have the desire in our
hearts to disobey a commandment, then we have broken it; we confess
these as our sins. And it
certainly is in God’s heart that we obey his commands.
Breaking God’s laws is not the foundational meaning of sin. It is a consequence of sin.
We talked about Jesus discovering by the Holy Spirit that he is
the Son of God, and that the passion of the Father’s heart is that
Jesus accomplishes what needs to be accomplished in order to bring us
into God’s family love. The
Gospel is that this has been accomplished in Christ.
And that our true lives are hidden in Christ.
Sin is the state of heart, mind, and then decisions which are
separated from this truth. And
we are now, in our lives, and in these days, to consider our selves dead
to sin. We are dead to sin.
The ultimate power of sin is death.
The truth of who we really are is that we are dead to death.
The death Jesus died; he died to sin, for us, ONCE
FOR ALL.
The truth that Easter reveals to us is that we are already siblings of
Jesus in his relationship with our Heavenly Father.
One of the first things which this news does for us is that it
frees us from thinking we need to and are trying to make ourselves right
with God. Religion is about
making ourselves right with God. Therefore,
we are not religious any more; we are already right with God. This is a celebration. We
come to church because; it is here, in our worship, where we are lifted
up by the Holy Spirit to share in Jesus’ worship of our Father.
Because we are dead to sin, we are alive to worship.
I love the story we read from Matthew’s Gospel about Mary Magdalene,
and the other Mary, which I believe was the mother of Jesus. They got up at daybreak, went to Jesus tomb, were met by an
angel who was dressed in white, shining light as bright as lightening,
told them Jesus was back alive and to go to the disciples and tell them
where to meet Jesus.
As they were running back, they ran into Jesus, fell down before him,
took hold of his feet and worshipped him.
They did not know it mentally, at that time, but they were dead
to sin and alive with and in Jesus Christ, ultimately because of the
love of God the Father.
In the Psalm we read, Psalm 143, it was a prayer of David, the King of
Israel. David gave personal
expressions of a lot of what he was going through.
In the last part he prayed to the Lord, “Teach me the way to go.”
The truth of Easter is teaching us where we have already gone in Jesus
Christ. Realizing and
considering that death has no real significance over our real life in
God and with each other, and that our reality is that we are all sisters
and brother with and in Christ; then God has already taught us which way
to go in our lives.
Whatever important decisions we have to make in our lives, we certainly
pray to God. And now we may
say “Yes” to and believe that the real truth of who we are has
already converted us in Christ. Even
when we are hurting, struggling, and anxious over circumstances in our
lives, as we have to pray and deal with them, we can always remember to
consider ourselves dead to sin and alive for Christ, because one of the
greatest realities we will ever know is that He died ONCE
FOR ALL.
Let us pray…
Amen
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