Cliff Notes — Romans 6

Romans 6

Apostle has spoken so magnificently of the completeness of God’s grace for sinners that he anticipates being accused of what today we would call “anti-nomianism” (against law).

As we said last week we should especially note two things at the outset.

1.) His understanding of the Gospel is so completely Christ centered that he can be accused of antinomianism.

2.) He thoroughly rejects and refutes being antinomian.

For the Apostle Baptism is the hinge point of new realities for the believer. In Baptism we are thoroughly identified w/ Christ so that His death becomes our death and His resurrection becomes our resurrection. This reality has the inevitable implication that we, being dead to sin as the dominating control center in our lives, are free to walk in newness of life.

“Old man” — Reference to who we were in Adam

“Body of Sin” — Whole of our fallen nature or the whole self in all of its fallenness.

“Might be done away” — In the sense of being the necessarily controlling agency in our lives.

In Baptism we died to our old mode of existence.

“Reckon yourselves” — Become who you are

12 — Imperative // 13 Imperative

— Certain realities have been laid out about what God has done and these realities have need to be considered true by believers.

Illustration — Emancipation

14 — Indicative “Sin shall not have dominion” — (Indicative) Promise not (Imperative) exhortation

The Apostle throughout this chapter has often personified sin as all consuming power center. In vs. 14 Paul lays out the promise that Sin shall no longer be their Lord for they have another Lord … Jesus. The reason that sin will not have dominion is because they are

6:14 — “Not under law, but under grace” — Now in light of what is said elsewhere in Romans (3:31, 7:12, 14a, 8:4, 13:8-10) we dare not conclude that this mean that, because of grace we have no relationship to the law.

We must keep in mind the contrast here is between “under law” and “under grace.”

I would submit that what is being said here is that believers are no longer under the law as a condemning reality but are under grace as a reality of God’s undeserved favor towards them.

So, if read this way vs. 14 would teach,

For sin is not your Lord, for you are not under God’s condemnation as thundered by the law against sin but you are under God’s undeserved favor.

If they were under God’s condemnation as thundered by the Law then Sin would be their Lord but as they are now under God’s undeserved favor (grace) Sin is not their Lord.

Such an understanding honors the way that Paul speaks of the Law elsewhere while at the same time making sense of this passage.

vs. 15 —

Again the accusation is raised that the Apostle has just navigated himself into an antinomian position w/ this slight difference

In vs. 1 the false inference gathered from 5:20 that is being warded off is that we should sin to make grace abound. Here the false inference gathered from vs. 14b that is being warded off is that sinful acts to not matter anymore more as far as Christians are concerned because we are no longer under the condemnation of the law but are under grace.

This inference is warded off by an appeal to reason that includes the idea of the Antithesis.

1.) Appeal to reason — You are the slaves of which ever master you obey. Sinful acts do matter because they indicate who your master really is.

2.) Antithesis — You have only two alternatives from which to choose concerning whom you will be slaves to.

Seed of the Serpent vs. Seed of the Woman.

Assorted Thoughts On Romans 6:1-4

Romans 6 — Meets Two Similar Objections From a hypothetical foil

1 — Hypothetical Objection #1

Shall we continue to sin that grace may abound?

Considerations

1.) The Apostle has so heightened God’s favor (grace) and the liberating character of Christ’s work for us (Chapter 5) that he must pause and deal w/ those who might reach inappropriate conclusions based on his teaching.

One wonders if today God’s favor (grace) and the liberating Character of Christ’s work for us is so emphatically heightened that we are forced to pause to reject accusations of antinomianism.

2.) Sinning is the issue that is being dealt w/ here and as obvious as this might seem we must pause to emphasize that there is no way that we would know what sinning is, which we are to be dead to, or what walking of newness of life is, which we are to be alive to, w/o a standard. There must be some standard that informs us what sin is and what walking in newness of life is. That standard ever remains God’s law.

Now for the Christian that Law is redeemed under Christ, which is to say that we are not using the law as a means to curry or earn God’s favor, (we have no need to do that since we have freely been given God’s favor in Christ) but rather the Christian esteems God’s law for it is the standard that tells him what He must turn from and it is the standard that informs him what walking in newness of life means.

Without any objective standard, as found in God’s word, the idea of being “dead to sin” and “walking in newness of life,” would be impossible to qualitatively and objectively determine.

2-14 — Hypothetical Objection Answered

vs. 2 — Emphatic rejection // Rhetorical Question

Parallel passage — Gal. 2:19 — 19 For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God.

Considerations

1.) Died to Sin — Sin is being referred to here as the controlling principle from which the pagan lives. We have died to the necessity that we must be controlled by sin … by who we are in Adam.

This does not mean that we no longer sin individual sins. It merely means that the person who has died w/ Christ is the person who can now say “no” to sin, because Sin is not that principle, or life source, from which they are being animated.

vs.3 — Parallel passage — Gal. 3:27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Considerations

1.) “Do you not know”

Appeal to the mind. The Apostles expects them to have learned something important. The Christian life can not be lived apart from the life of the mind. He answers this whole objection by seeking to set people’s thinking straight.

2.) The appeal to Baptism

Notice — The appeal isn’t here to somebody’s decision for Christ. Now, that is not to diminish the necessity to make a decision for Christ but it is to say that when it comes to these soteriological matters Paul puts the emphasis on the objective covenant markers in the Christian’s life. The emphasis is on the means of grace when it comes to correction in thinking and growth in Christ.

3.) Baptized into Christ Jesus // Baptized into His death

Identification – In Baptism we are identified w/ the death of Christ. Vs. 10 seems to be what the Apostle is getting at here. Just as Christ died to sin, we, in being identified w/ Christ in Baptism, likewise should reckon ourselves dead to sin.

– In Baptism the previous controlling principle of our life (sin … sometimes also referred to as “the law”) is broken and we are put into Christ. We thus die to sin and are resurrected to walk in newness of life.

4.) Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father

Excursus – Minor proof for reality of Trinity

19 Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

Romans 1:7 — According to the Spirit of Holiness

In the New Testament we find varied places where Christ’s resurrection is attributed to each person of the Trinity. Doctrine of perichoresis.

Bavinck on Grace & Nature

“Therefore, whereas salvation in Christ, was formerly considered primarily a means to separate man from sin and the world, to prepared him for heavenly blessedness and to cause him to enjoy undisturbed fellowship w/ God there, Ritschl posits the very opposite relationship: the purpose of salvation in Christ is precisely to enable a person, once he is freed from the oppressive feeling of sin and lives in awareness of being a child of God, to exercise his earthly vocation and fulfill his moral purpose in this world. The antithesis, therefore, is fairly sharp: on the one side a Christian life that considers the highest goal, now and hereafter, to be the contemplation of God and fellowship w/ him, and for that reason (always being more or less hostile to the riches of an earthly life) is in danger of falling into asceticism, pietism, and mysticism; but on the side of Ritschl, a Christian life that considers its highest goal to be the Kingdom of God, i.e., the moral obligation of mankind, and for that reason, (always being more or less averse to the withdrawal into solitude and quiet communion w/ God), is in danger of degenerating into a cold Pelagianism and an unfeeling moralism. Personally, I do not yet see any way of combining the two points of view, but I do know that there is much that is excellent in both, and that both contain undeniable truth.”

Herman Bavinck
De Theologie van Albrecht Ritschl (Theologicische Studien VI 1888 — pg.397)
Nature & Grace in Herman Bavinck — Jan Veenhof

The Pietist dualistically separates nature from grace and lays all the emphasis on the human being as Christian and so calls the person to give up his humanity (nature) in favor of the pursuit of his Christianity (grace). This can express itself in the Anabaptist who considers the world of nature evil and who thus seeks to completely withdraw from the world or it can find Roman Catholic expression where nature only finds its meaning where it is brought under the canopy of grace. In such an expression nature only has value where it is superintended by the hierarchy of grace as found in the Church. A third way this dualism can express itself is in the R2Kt Kantian system where nature and grace remain cordoned off from one another. In such a dualistic system grace neither calls the faithful away from the world as with the Anabaptist dualism expression nor does it seek to bring nature under the canopy of grace as in the Roman Catholic dualism. Instead what it does is it allows nature to operate independently of and uninfluenced by grace in a common realm that is neither of the devil (anabaptism) or under the mediation of supervening grace (Roman Catholicism). In the R2Kt dualism there is no attempt to solve the dualism that one finds attempted both by anabaptists (nature is all evil) or Rome (nature is controlled by grace).

Bavinck points out however that there is another side of the coin that traditional liberalism falls into. Liberalism of the Ritschl variety tended to deny a supernatural realm of grace and as such the realm of grace was collapsed into the realm of nature, with the result that the nature/grace realm was the realm that must be rescued by deliberate activism. Since there is no unique supernatural grace realm to give a clear word as to what this activism must look like the result of Liberal activism was always autonomous and anthropocentric, and inevitably resulted in a kingdom building effort that, though pursued in the name of Christ, invariably led to Hegelian statist control structures where the representative of the State became God walking on the earth.

As a theologian Bavinck was not satisfied w/ these dualisms, nor was he satisfied with the how Ritschl and other liberals collapsed grace into nature. Bavinck’s contribution to Reformed theology was the attempt to find a way where grace could influence nature without collapsing grace into nature. Bavinck was not satisfied w/ either a nature-grace schematic where nature and grace were divorced from one another but neither was he satisfied w/ a nature-grace understanding where the distinctions between nature and grace were obliterated.

Veenhof in his book suggests that Bavinck limned a third way where grace could be seen to influence nature without either nature swallowing grace or grace swallowing nature. Such a solution is thus a threat to all dualisms and pietisms on one side as well as all autonomously inspired Kingdom projects on the other that lose grace in the putative pursuit of the Kingdom of God on earth which is in reality the Utopian search for the Kingdom of man.

Bavinck’s solution ends up making him the foe of just about all other contenders.

Obama Administration Has Made It About Race

“And President Obama (is) expected to do a lot more (for the Black community),” said (Charles) Ogletree, referring to the challenges Obama faces in two wars and the struggling economy. Still, he predicted, the new health care law would affect uninsured black Americans more than any other segment of the population.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iYGOI4yJ-sG3CCY-VilGt3T_PZvQD9F593M00

Charles Ogletree is an African-American Harvard Law Professor who has for years supported race based reparations. What we learn from the quote above is the confirmation of what I have been saying for some time and that is that the Obama-care legislation is really reparations by means of redistribution in a less overt form. Reparations was always an idea that resulted in visceral resistance in the American population. Outright reparations was an idea that could have never received the votes in order pass. However stealth reparations, by way of major legislation which is thought to be primarily economically advantageous for the black community has become the way that reparations is being achieved.

Second, Ogletree’s comments reveal that Obama is a true disciple of Jeremiah Wright who preached hatred of white people. Obama is pursuing policy that is designed to enrich the black community at the expense of Americans who are not black. Further, Ogletree, an adviser for Obama, observes that Obama is expected to do a lot more for blacks, but what people need to know is that this doing of more for Blacks as an interest group is at the cost of the impoverishment of white people.

Now this observation makes many white people uncomfortable because they have, for two or three generations, been inculcated with the idea that Black people are oppressed and so can’t be racist. Also, such observations as what I’ve offered above are considered in themselves to be racist. However, with the advent of the ubiquitous accusations against (mostly-White) Tea-party folks as being racist reveals we are long past the time when we can continue to ignore the racism that is emanating from the Pravda “American” media who are serving as spokesmen now for the new black power center. We simply must, not only refuse the accusations of “racism,” but we must also insist that it is the Obama administration that are the racists, haters of Christians, and haters of historical Western culture. It is the Black community (excluding many individual notable exceptions) who have been turned into the shock troops, along w/ the perverts and feminists, of the cultural Marxists in their attempt to destroy the last remnant of the West.

Some people are beginning to understand this but the battle that we are currently involved in, in resisting the Obama administration is not primarily about the economy, or even primarily about the size of Government. The battle we are currently involved in, is a battle to resist the success of Cultural Marxism to overturn the very little remains of Christendom. Unfortunately, the chief disadvantage that those who are resisting the cultural Marxist are saddled w/ is that they are not epistemologically self conscious regarding their belief system. Many of the tea-party types are operating off the fumes of Biblical Christianity when, in order to be successful in their resistance, they need to be fueled w/ the high octane petrol of Biblical Christianity.

In this contest, one tactic that needs to be constantly returned to in order to try and reason with the shock troops of the cultural Marxists is the attempt to explain to them that if they get what they want they will be worse off then where they are now. Most of these cultural shock troops really believe that their lot in life is going to be improved once Cultural Marixism reaches absolute ascendancy. Little do they know that the shock troops will be the first to be eliminated if their elitist masters take control.

It is most unfortunate that a war that is really primarily theological, ideological and cultural also has become a war where the dividing line is largely crossing race and ethnic boundaries as well.

The Ron Paul Coalition

Last week a poll was conducted which found that, if an election for President was currently held, Rep. Ron Paul would finish w/ 41% of the vote with Barry Hussein Sotero garnering 42% of the vote. It was a bit of a shocker to the political class (Both Republicrats and Demoicans) in America as the political class continues to seek to do all they can to marginalize the ideas of Ron Paul.

However, Ron Paul’s problems are not primarily the political class. Ron Paul’s primary problem, as was alluded to in a conversation I had this past weekend w/ Chad Degenhart, is that Paul’s coalition is fragile and one would think that a smart opposition to Paul could easily divide his movement.

After Chad made the passing observation about the fragility of Paul’s coalition I began to think about that reality. From where I sit you have Ron Paul building a coalition between people who support ordered liberty and people who support disordered liberty sharing only the common ground of opposing those who favor ordered Statist tyranny. This is not a coalition that can survive somebody coming along and pointing out that people who support ordered liberty (Jeffersonian Constitutionalism) and people who support disordered liberty (Randian libertinism) despise one another.

Allow me to give just one example. Ron Paul reveals his Randian Libertinism by supporting the idea that abortion should be an issue that the individual states decide. A Jeffersonian Constitutionalist is abhorred by such reasoning since they believe that the “Due Process clause” of the Constitution and the promise of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness requires the Federal Government to universally prohibit abortion in the nation.

Ron Paul is living the charmed life right now because people w/ very opposite convictions are coming to him and are reading him through their worldview lenses. Those who hate Statist tyranny and love ordered freedom listen to Ron Paul and hear him as a champion of their ideas. At the same time however, others who hate Statist tyranny and love disordered liberty hear him through their worldview and they think they hear somebody who favors, even if he personally does not, legalization of drugs, the legalization of prostitution, the legalization of homosexual marriages, and the legalization of every kind of disordered dysfunction that can be imagined. These two types of people should find the other type to be repulsive and yet in the Ron Paul campaign you find them working cheek by jowl in order to get Paul elected. It is quite surreal.

The odd thing about Libertarian thinking is that it can only really work in a culture where it doesn’t need to work. That is to say that Libertarian thinking, in order to be successful, requires people to be self governing according to a particular standard. If there is no shared standard as to what self governing means or looks like Objectivist Libertarianism can only lead to anarchy and chaos. However, where there exists a shared standard as to what self-governing means and looks like then a Libertarian like political philosophy can be easily embraced since there is not a need for heavy institutional controls upon a people. There is no need for the heavy institutional controls because the shared standard means that self-governing does all the controlling work.

Those who desire ordered liberty (and I am one of them) must realize that there is some heavy spade work to do before the kind of political government that Ron Paul is offering can work on a national scale. Offering people liberty only works if people are self governing. The incarceration rate, the out of wedlock pregnancies and births, the abortion rate, the billions of dollars made in the pornography industry, and a host of other indicators reveals that it has been a very long time since the citizenry of America could be fairly characterized as a self-governing people. Giving Americans Randian Libertinism at this point would be like giving a 3 year old a box full of grenades and telling them to go be free.

In order for Ron Paul’s political philosophy to work there is first a need for Reformation and awakening in the Church and in the country. And the kind of Reformation we are talking about here is not the slushy emotional experiential feelings oriented Reformation. The kind of Reformation I am talking about is the kind of Reformation that creates in people a commitment to the shared standard of God’s Law Word as the definition by which self-governing will be assessed. Until that kind of Reformation and awakening comes about all the talk about “real change” that Rep. Paul would bring is illusory.

Only a return to a Biblical Christianity that preaches Christ crucified, risen and ascended as King can provide the fertile ground out of which Jeffersonian Constitutionalism can work. Only a return to Biblical Christianity where individuals who were once dead to sin, but, by the power of God, are resurrected to walk in newness of life, can provide the backdrop against which political structures that provide real liberty make sense. Only by a apostate Western Church and lapsed Western Christians rejuvenated to embrace Biblical (pro God’s Law-Word in its third use in the public square) Christianity can the West avoid the humanist night that is currently falling upon the West. Until that kind of Christianity — the kind of Christianity that gave America her ordered liberty — is once again characteristic of us as a people, no political philosophy or candidate is going to save the day.