Glory to Jesus Christ!  Glory forever!

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

What St. Paul tells us today in his Holy Epistle is but a continuation of what we heard last week at Obadiah John’s Baptism.  The whole of this chapter is rooted in and revolves around the Mystery of Baptism and its sacramental effects upon us and in us.  It is how the grace of God works in us.  In short, the Apostle might very well simply say, “You have been baptized.  You have been liberated.  You have died, and having died with Christ in the baptismal waters of divine grace you are dead to sin so that no longer are you slaves or servants of sin but rather of God and His righteousness.”  This is the crux of the matter.  It is the whole of the Christian life – a dying and rising with Jesus Christ.  We are crucified with Christ so that we might walk in the newness of His Resurrection (Rm. 6:1-11; Ga. 2:19-20; 6:14).  Elsewhere, St. Paul expresses this new reality in Christ in this way: God the Father “has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the Kingdom of the Son of His love, in Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Co. 1:13-14).  Or, to use the Apostle’s language from today’s Epistle, once we were slaves of sin and our passions, but now in Jesus Christ we have been made slaves of God to serve His righteousness.  In Christ – and only in Him – have we entered into the new reality of God’s life, that is to say, we have “put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Ep. 4:24; Co. 3:10).  A change in ownership, therefore, has occurred so that we no longer belong to ourselves or for ourselves, - we no longer belong to the devil (1 Jn. 3:1-9) – but rather we live now “for Him Who died for [us] and rose again” (1 Cr. 6:19; 2 Cr. 5:15).   

However, as many of us know by experience, that new reality – our translation from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light – doesn’t always feel as such.  But, just because we don’t always feel that new reality, it is nevertheless present doing its work in us as surely as leaven in the dough (Mt. 13:33; Pp. 1:6; 2:12-13), engaging our free will and setting us right, ever converting us more fully and more deeply to God and His righteousness so that the ideas, the acts, the morals we once approved of we are now ashamed of in the light of the Kingdom of God’s goodness.  Sacred Scripture isn’t bashful about it being a spiritual struggle, simply because we live in this world that is fallen and militates against God’s redemption and sanctification.  Thus, the Apostle urges us, “You have been baptized.  Reckon yourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.  ‘Therefore do not let sin [and its passions by which it works] reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lusts.’  You have put on the Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore, make no provision for fulfilling the passions of the flesh!” (Rm. 6:11-12; 13:14).  Indeed, brethren, Christ has put us on!        

This truth of our new reality in Jesus Christ must ever be before us.  It is a new reality that we must each and every day embrace by faith in an act of our will which we are to live out by the grace and mercies of God.  It is very much a profound act of worship, even as St. Paul says later on in this Epistle: “I beseech you therefore, brethren,” he says, “by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, . . . .” (Rm. 12:1-2). 

This worship is an act of our free will: we can choose to listen to the apostolic counsel or ignore it.  The grace is God’s, but the action must be ours in cooperation with God’s grace.  In like manner, St. Paul might exhort us,

Just as you once served and labored for Satan the deceiver, now serve Jesus Christ and labor for Him all the days of your life.  You have been baptized.  You have died.  You are raised with Jesus Christ in the power of His Resurrection.  Now, present yourselves as instruments and vessels of God’s grace and righteousness just as you once did to the Devil.  You have been baptized.  The grace of God now penetrates and permeates your soul putting to death the passions so that the fruit and virtues of the Spirit of holiness might take root and grow in you.  The end result is Everlasting Life (Morning Prayers, Prayer #9; Rm. 6:12-17). 

Did we fall?  Then get up!  Did we stumble?  Then take another step in the direction of God and His Light.  God’s grace is ours.  The Holy Spirit is ours.  Death has been conquered by the One Who is the Resurrection and the Life (Jn. 11:25).  He Who heard the plea of the Roman centurion on behalf of his slave, hears our pleas as well if we but seek Him in faith (Mt. 8:5-13).  All of these acts of faith are acts of our free will.  They dispose us to God and set us in God’s Presence no matter how slight or weak they seem to us.  Beloved, never dismiss those tiniest attempts on our part to yield ourselves to God and His righteousness.  “Thou knowest the multitude of my evil doings, Thou knowest also my wounds and sores,” we pray in our Pre-Communion Prayers.  “But Thou knowest also my faith and seest my intention and hearest my sighs.  Nothing remains hidden from Thee, my God, my Maker, my Redeemer, not even a single drop of tears, nor part of a teardrop.  Thine eyes have seen what I have failed to do, and in Thy book are written many things not yet done.  See my humility, see my toil, how great it is!” (Pre-Communion Prayer #6).

Baptism sets us on the right path, and that path is God and His righteousness.  “O Lord, grant that now I may love Thee as I once loved sin, . . . .” (Morning Prayers #9).  Our love for Jesus must be as compelling, if not moreso, as our love for sinning.  In fact, it must put to death in us our love for sin.  And how is that done?  By repentance, by confession, which can only happen as we see how shameful our sins truly are and how they lead us, not into Paradise, but through the gates of Hell.  By fasting, by prayer, by almsgiving, by presenting ourselves to the sanctifying grace of God in the services of His house, by cultivating and nurturing the virtues and starving our passions.  Paul speaks of being ashamed of our former ways of death, that is, those ways which only ended in eternal death and separation from God.  The light of God helps us to see with spiritual eyes and understand with our spiritual hearts just how deep our darkness was before we were baptized into Jesus Christ.  Why we ever relished such things or how we could ever relish such things astounds us (at least we should be astounded), except to say that is just how powerful sin is to blind us, to delude us into believing we have no other options.  Sin uses our passions to convince us we are forever enslaved to them and in their throes. 

Indeed, then, with the Apostle, we cry out, “O wretched man that I am!  Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”  And the answer arises just as surely as on that most glorious morning of Pascha, “I thank God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rm. 7:24-25).  Jesus Christ is “’the Way, the Truth, and the Life’” (Jn. 14:6).  He is “’the Light of the world’” in Whom there is no darkness at all (Jn. 8:12; 12:35-36; 1 Jn. 1:5).  If we walk in Him and by Him, we walk in His Light and we have communion with Him and His Father (1 Jn. 1:3, 7), and that communion is Life Eternal – God’s gift of grace to us.  Thus, the Apostle can command us, “Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good.  He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God” (3 Jn. 1:11).  Beloved, “present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness” whose “end [is] Everlasting Life . . . through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us.  Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ!  Glory forever!

PROPERS:

Rm. 6:18-23               

Mt. 8:5-13