"A MATTER OF DEATH AND LIFE!"

ROMANS 6:1-13

A Cuban born Miami girl whose father fought for three years to come to Florida to give her one of his kidneys underwent life-saving surgery. Cuban authorities gave the father permission to leave for the operation. Doctors gave Greta Blanco, 12, one of her father's kidneys and rebuilt her bladder in a rare operation. Greta was born in Cuba with defective kidneys that contributed to health problems including slow growth, blindness, bone deformities and partial deafness. It is hoped the transplant will improve or reverse some of those symptoms and allow her to have a more normal life. For Greta it was a matter of life or death.

Maine lawmakers are wondering if the time has come to do away with the $100.00 fine for ridiculing someone who refuses to fight a duel. It is not that they want people to settle disputes with guns, they just think it is among a series of statutes now unneeded because of changing social mores and technology. Said representative Charles Laverdiere, "We just have not had a lot of those (duels) lately ..." Maine adopted its anti-dueling laws in 1820. This, too, was a matter of life or death.

A Wisconsin farmer brings fresh meaning to the term, "pond scum." He has been charged with attempted murder for allegedly trying to poison his wife by injecting her with bacteria-laden water from a pond. Doctors could not figure out last month why Donna Stauffacher nearly died from repeated bouts of fever and low blood pressure linked to a massive bacterial infection. A hospital worker spotted Jack Stauffacher fiddling with his wife's intravenous tubes and confiscated syringes filled with the bacteria-laden water. This was definitely a matter of life or death.

The Christian walk itself is a matter, not of life or death, but the other way around: it is a matter of death and life. Paul sets that clearly before us in the text. Let's see what he says:

• AT BAPTISM WE EXPERIENCE DEATH: VV2-3:
• Paul said we have died to sin; he said we have been baptized into Christ's death. That is, we have identified with, and have experienced the benefits of Christ's death. It is at our immersion into Christ that we died to sin and encounter the benefits of His shed blood.
• The death we die to sin is synonymous with repentance.
• To die to sin is to turn away from it, to renounce it, to forsake it and to abandon it.
• To die to sin is to be as if we are insensitive to its devices, allurements and power.
• To die to sin is to cease living in it, justifying, indulging, rationalizing and practicing it.
• Paul uses the metaphor of slave and master. The thought is that if we serve sin it is the master, we are the slave. But when a slave died, however dictatorial, overbearing, controlling or manipulative the master may have been, the slave was no longer responsible to or under the control of the master. Paul said, "knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin." VV6-7.
• Though we have died to sin, the human will is still a factor. This is not automatic. Baptism does not guarantee us immunization from sin.
• Romans 6:11 "Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus."
• Romans 6:12-13 "Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God."
• Colossians 3:5 "Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry."
• One man, recently immersed, underwent a terrific time of testing and temptation. He struggled with the tempter, and finally gained mastery when he shouted, "I cannot, I will not yield! I have been baptized!" He had experienced the death at baptism.

• AT BAPTISM WE EXPERIENCE LIFE: VV4, 8:

• Not only is there a death, an end to things, but there is a new life, a beginning.
• We walk in "newness of life." V4.
• We live life in unity with Christ. "Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him." V8.
• There are 3 images here to consider:
• The image of being re-born: Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again." John 3:5-7. This is regeneration.
• The image of being re-created: Paul said, "Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come." 2 corinthians 5:17. This is conversion.
• The image of being resurrected: Paul said, "Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the father, so we too might walk in newness of life." Romans 6:4. This is resuscitation.
• God has always wanted his people to experience life:
• Speaking to early Israel, He said, "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them." Deuteronomy 30:19-20. God says: "choose life!"
• Jesus said, "The thief comes only to steal, and kill, and destroy; I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly." John 10:10. He came to give life abundant!
• Jesus said to Martha, sister of Lazarus, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" John 11:25-26. Jesus promises eternal life.
• There are only two ways open to us. The wide, easy, popular way leads to death. The narrow, disciplined way leads to life. Choose life.
• One man said, "I have no room for Jesus in my life. It's so full of other things." That's saying, "I have no room for life in my life." it's like saying, "I have no room for money in my bank account." or "I have no room for food in my lunch." Jesus is our life and to exclude Him is to forfeit life. To be baptized into Him is to experience life.

• DAILY WE MANIFEST DEATH AND LIFE: VV11-13:

• Being baptized into Jesus Christ is more than religion, more than ritual, more than adopting a new set of ethics, more than going to church, saying our prayers, singing the hymns, tithing or reading the Bible.
• Being in Christ means we have started on a way of daily dying and daily living.
• Daily we die:
• To selfish pursuits and attitudes which disregard the needs and rights of others.
• To sensual, flesh-oriented desires which motivate us to operate on the basis of unrestrained appetites.
• To anger, resentment, wrath and bitterness.
• To apathy, carelessness, indolence and indifference to the spiritual needs of others.
• Daily we live:
• To obey and please and bring honor to Jesus Christ.
• To serve and benefit those around us.
• To witness and testify to the gospel.
• To demonstrate the power and reality of Christ in our lives.
• The proprietor of a dry-cleaning and dyeing business hung this quaint sign in his shop window: "we dye to live, and live to dye; the more we dye, the more we live; and the more we live, the more we dye." For the child of God, it is also true that the more he dies, the more he lives!

To what have you died? To what must you die? And, perhaps more positively, to what must you come alive? There is a paradox here: me must first die to live. Daily we must take our cross, the implement of death, and crucify pride, self-righteousness, self-centeredness, and every form of sin. Daily we must experience the renewal of grace -- forgiveness, restoration, and reconciliation. If you have never died to sin and if you have never been buried in the watery grave of baptism, remember it is a matter of death and life. Everyone lives for and to something. For what and for whom will you live? The unequivocal declaration of the Christian is, "I'll live for Him!" Can you say that this morning? Will you say it? Here's how important it is: It's a matter of death and life.

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