Reading chapter 6 verse 1 to 11. Before we read God's word, let us ask for His blessing as we read. Heavenly Father, we pray that You would speak to us now by Your word through the power of Your Holy Spirit. Father, we acknowledge our dependence upon You. We don't do not know what we need to know, and so we pray that You would speak. In Jesus' name. Amen. Romans chapter 6, verse 1 to 11. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Now I've chosen this text today because today is a special day. After the service today, we will be baptizing Alicia and Elijah, my son. And this text speaks to us about what that means, what it means that we what we'll be doing with baptism. But in order for us to understand what Paul is talking about in Romans 6 here, I want to just begin by considering with you something that we all actually innately know: the nature of symbolic ceremonies. On the 8th of September, 2022, Queen Elizabeth died. And her son, Charles, became king on that day. Many months later, on the 6th of May, 2023, King Charles was crowned in a coronation ceremony. When did King Charles become king? Was it when his mother died and he ascended to the throne, or was it on the day when he was crowned king with great ceremony and symbol? It's a difficult question to answer, isn't it? In one sense. There are many ceremonies like this in our life. Almost 14 years ago now, I married Shamira. Our hearts were knit together at least a year before that. We knew that we wanted to commit ourselves to one another and live a life together for 12 months prior to our wedding. So when we came to the altar and we committed ourselves to one another, in one sense, we were just confirming something that was already there. And yet, I woke up one morning a single man, and I went to bed a married man, simply because of a symbolic ceremony. You see, symbolic ceremonies do something. They change reality, even though they are actually very often in our life engaging with an existing situation. Does that make sense to you? And today we are celebrating a symbolic ceremony: the baptism of Alicia and Elijah. And in much the same way as a wedding or a coronation changes reality, today, Alicia and Elijah, your reality changes. Both of you have known Christ for some time now. Both of you have been united to Him in His death and resurrection for some time now. Both of you have had a new life working in you for some time now. And yet today, two things happen. Today, you make a public commitment to Christ, a public declaration of the work that Christ has already done in you. Today, Alicia and Elijah will confess before all of us, publicly, their repentance and their belief in Jesus Christ as their only hope in life and death. You can think of today's baptism ceremony like the vows at a coronation, the crowning of a king, or the placing of a wedding ring on a finger. Elijah and Alicia are voluntarily declaring their connection with and commitment to Jesus Christ. And yet, if we think about weddings for a moment, there's a fascinating thing that Jesus says about weddings. Because when God looks at two people voluntarily committing themselves to one another, listen to what Jesus says: "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, 'Therefore, a man shall decide to leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh'?" Right? They they are who's doing the action in a wedding? It's the man and the wife committing themselves to one another. And yet, listen to what Jesus says: "So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." Do you see there's two actors at play in a wedding? Well, three, really. A man and a woman joining themselves together, and God joining them together. And you say, "No, no, no, I chose to join my myself to my wife. I made the decisions here." And God says, "No, I brought you together." And that is precisely the second thing that's happening today. Not only are Elijah and Alicia voluntarily, publicly declaring their commitment to and their union with Jesus Christ, God is declaring to Elijah and Alicia today that they have been joined to Christ. And you say, "No, I made the decision. I made the decision to join Christ. I made the decision to be baptized." And God says, "No, I joined you together with My Son." Tim Chester puts it this way. He says, "Baptism declares and affirms the covenant or contract not that Christians make with God, but that God makes with Christians." And we see this in Romans 6. This makes sense of why Paul can speak the way he does in Romans 6 in the passage that we read. At the beginning of chapter 6, Paul is seeking to answer the hypothetical question, "Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?" That is, if God is so gracious to us that He is willing to forgive us our sin, and if He's so if His grace is so magnified because of the extremity of our sin, because we've been so rebellious against Him that when He comes and forgives us, His grace looks even more amazing than you could possibly imagine, then surely we should just continue in sin because His grace is going to look even more amazing the more rotten we are. And he answers that question by saying, "How can we who died to sin live any longer in it?" And then look at verse 3 and how he uses baptism in this argument: "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?" And before we get to the bulk of this sermon, which will be about what he what baptism means in this context, I want to point out how Paul is using baptism when he's talking to the believers in Rome. As he considers this very practical question of whether or not we should tolerate sin in our life, Paul says something like, "Are you crazy? You've been baptized!" Right? When was the last time you said that to someone as they're wrestling with sin? When was the last time you pointed someone back to their baptism as an event in their life that marks them out, that confirms their standing before God, that tells them about their identity in Him and how they should therefore live? Don't you get it, Paul says? You're a baptized person, and that, by definition, changes your relationship to sin. Imagine King Charles wakes up one day and decides to have a career change. You know, he decides he wants to become a plumber. His advisors would say to him, "What are you doing? You're crazy. Don't you remember you were crowned king?" His coronation speaks not just to the people around him; it speaks to him. Even though King Charles chose to speak his vows, his coronation places a reality on him, a duty on his shoulders, a calling on his life that goes far beyond his changes in mind later on. His coronation is a symbolic ceremony that affects real change in reality, that King Charles looks back on and says, "I can't be a plumber anymore. I was crowned king. I've got a new calling on my life, a new identity, something I cannot shirk from." And this is Paul's point. If you are baptized, God has placed a claim on your life. You are now no longer in the same situation you were before you were baptized. Your baptism speaks to you. And so, Alicia and Elijah, my prayer for you this week has been that this day would be stamped in your memory, because today, everything changes. Yes, you've known Christ for some time, but today He is marking you out, and He's placing this marker in your life. We're embodied souls, and He places embodied markers in our life that you can look back on one day and say, "No, I know who I am because God placed this marker in my life." And so let's explore together. What is it that this marker speaks of? What is it that this symbolic ceremony is telling us about Elijah and Alicia's life? Two things only. The first is baptism speaks to our union with Christ's death. The first thing that Paul points out is that baptism is saying we are joined to Christ's death and so we have died to sin. This is all through these verses. Look with me in verse 2: "How can we who died to sin live any longer in it?" And then in verse 3, he connects this to baptism: "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?" Again, in verse 4: "We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death." And in verse 5: "We have been united with Him in a death like His." In verse 6: "We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing." In verse 7: "For one who has died has been set free from sin." Verse 8: "Now, if we have died with Christ…" It's all through. I think Paul's trying to make a point. Your baptism speaks to you about your union with Christ's death. In what sense are we united to Christ in His death? Well, in a few senses. One sense in which we are united to Christ in His death is that we have been united to His death in the sense that His death was a judgment upon sin. This is how salvation works. Jesus Christ lived a perfect life. He was not someone who deserved to suffer the penalty of sin in His life. And yet, He suffered. And yet, as He came to the cross, He not only suffered physical death, but He suffered under the very wrath of God, not because He deserved it, but because He was doing it on behalf of His people. God on the cross poured out all of his righteous judgment and anger towards the sins of His people onto His Son. Isaiah says He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. All that we deserve, and we know it, all that we deserve for rejecting God, for our selfishness, for our lusts, our greed, our bitterness, our hatred, our laziness, our rejection of God—you know that feeling of guilt you feel when you do something that you know is wrong?—all that we know that we deserve, plus all that we don't know we deserve but we deserve anyway, was poured out on Jesus Christ when He died. And the way salvation works is that God says that penalty can be paid for you, has been paid for you, if you lay hold of Jesus Christ, if you place your faith in Him, if you don't try and depend on your own works, on your own good things that you do that you think might make up for your sin, if you reject yourself entirely as having anything to do with your own salvation, and if you lay hold of Jesus alone and His death as the only payment that you're going to offer to God for your sin, then He's paid for your sin. And when you are baptized, you are saying two things about that. You are saying, "I acknowledge that I deserve the death that Jesus died." I confess before all that I deserve death. As you stand in the water and you are prepared to go underneath, you're saying that. But you are also saying, and thanks be to God that you're saying the second bit, you are also saying, "I confess that Jesus paid that penalty for me." You are identifying yourself with Christ as He hung on that tree. You are saying that as He hangs there, He's hanging there for you. So that so much so that when God looked at Christ and viewed Jesus as if He had committed all the sins that you have committed and will commit, He accounted to Jesus all of the punishment that you also deserve. That is what Alicia and Elijah are publicly declaring today. "I deserve the death that Jesus died, and Jesus is my representative who took that penalty upon Himself." And the amazing thing about baptism, like I said, is that God is declaring that too today. So much so, Elijah and Alicia, that when you wake up in 5 or 10 or 25 years time and you're wracked with overwhelming feelings of guilt and shame, you've fallen into sin yet again, and you feel like an idiot, and you feel like you're a disappointment to God, and you feel like there's no way that God could possibly accept a useless Christian like yourself—and I'm speaking from experience here—when you fall into those feelings, God says, "Look back at your baptism. I spoke to you there of how you died with Christ, how you know you deserve the penalty that He paid, and I spoke to you there about He about how He took it upon Himself." You were buried with Him. All the wrath you rightfully think you deserve has already been paid for. There's nothing left to be poured out on you. But to have died with Christ in baptism doesn't just mean that God's righteous judgment has been satisfied because Christ died in your place. Baptism doesn't just declare that you're free from the penalty of sin. There's more to the story. And actually, this second point is the main thrust of the argument in Romans 6. To have died with Christ also means that you are now free from the power of sin, not just the penalty, but also the power. Look at verse 6 and 7 in particular. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. You see, our problem as humans is not just that we are under judgment because of our sin, not just that we have guilt associated with our sin. Our problem is that we have a body of sin. We have an old man, an old self. In chapter 5, he talks about how it's essentially our Adamic nature. It's our human nature that we receive from our father Adam. And we know this. Sin has a huge power over us. That's why all around us, everyone's happy to admit that nobody's perfect. We would all like to be perfect. And yet for some reason, all through our society—I've only met one person ever who claimed to be perfect, and that was a very strange conversation, but aside from that—literally everyone else I know is very happy to admit that they're not perfect, which is a really interesting thing. What, do you not want to be perfect? You want to do the you want to do the right thing? Well then, why aren't you perfect? Why don't you keep doing the right thing? Well, I can tell you why. It's because you're a slave. It's because you have a corrupt heart. It's because you actually don't want to do the right thing. No one forces you to lie. No one forces you to cheat. No one forces you to covet everyone else's stuff and everyone else's life. No one forces you to be unthankful to God. You do it because you want to do it. Because there's a nature inside of you—yes, that you inherited, but it's still yours—that is enslaved to sin. Baptism speaks to us about a reality that takes place to that old man. You see, there's one sure way to be free if you're a slave. There's probably some other ways, but this one's really certain. One way to be free if you're a slave: die. If you die, your old masters got nothing on you. And that's exactly what Paul says has happened to you if you are in Christ Jesus. And he says your baptism speaks to you about that. It speaks to you about the fact that when you are joined to Christ by faith and the power of His Holy Spirit, that old man inside of you, the power that he has over you, to force you to run after every whim and desire that you hate innately is broken. All that power is broken because you have died with Christ. In this regard, baptism is like another symbolic ceremony that we practice: a funeral. You don't die at your funeral, unless you're you've kind of really, really organized. You die before your funeral, but your funeral is a symbol-filled ceremony where your death is publicly recognized and processed. In fact, a funeral is an excellent comparison to a baptism because a funeral becomes the the emotional focal point of death. If you think back to when you process the death of someone in your family, it's the funeral where where you dealt with it all. It was the funeral kind of closed the chapter in a sense, put a put a seal on the death. That was when it really became real. I think the the imagery of of placing a body in a tomb is just horrifically real. Seeing a dead body on a bed is very, very different to lowering it into the ground. And that's what's happening in in a baptism today. Elijah and Alicia, your old self died some time ago when you trusted in Christ and when He rejuvenated you by the power of His spirit. But today, we're going to lower you into the ground. And you can look back on it and and see it as this emotional focal point of your of the death of your old self. And so in Paul's case here in Romans 6, he's saying when you encounter temptation to sin in the future, when you're when you're dealing with that struggle that you have in your life and you're really wrestling through and you're fighting it, and he's saying, "Look back on your baptism and say to that old man who's who's trying to rear his zombie head up inside of you and tell you that you're meant to sin again," and say to him, "No! I know you're dead. I watched you die. I watched you go into the grave." And you watched him go into the grave today. To say this sort of thing in the face of strong temptation is hard. It's not an easy fight. Any baptized people out here who found that fight to be easy? It's not easy at all. But that's exactly the sort of conversation God wants you to have with your old man. Get back in the grave, old man. Get back in the grave. You don't belong here. But you know, it's not enough to die. It's not enough to to be free from the penalty of sin and the power of sin. We need to see a second thing that baptism speaks to us of. Baptism also speaks to us of our union with Christ's life. We need to rise again. We need an infusion of life and light and love for God and our neighbor. You know, there's there's when it comes to symbolic ceremonies, there's there's kind of some interesting points that it would be fascinating to pause life at and just consider what's happening there. When Shamira and I were at the altar and we're making vows to one another, there's possibly like a a point at which you could pause it where we we've left our parents. We've left our family. Shamira stops being a Tafale. When she's given away by her dad. But then she doesn't become an Eglington until you put a ring on her, right? Until you say, "I do," right at the end. We need to gain a new identity. If Shamira's dad would have just given her away into nothingness, that'd be that'd be very, very depressing. It'd be sad. It would be not good. There's no hope there. There's no new life there. He needs to give her away into something, into a new identity. And that's exactly what God does to us in baptism. Baptism is not only a tomb; it's a womb. It's a place that speaks to us of new birth, of a new identity. Elijah and Alicia, you would be baptized into the name of God Himself. Matthew 28, Jesus commands us, "Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." You leave the family of Adam, a family that is laden with guilt, that is facing great penalties due to their sin. You leave a family that's overtaken by the power of sin, and God brings you into His family, the family of the Triune God, the only living God. And once again, this is through union with Christ. It's it's through being joined to Him in His life. So much so that just as Jesus, when He was baptized, had the heavens open up and the voice of the Father say, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," you are so united to Christ that when you are baptized today, He says the same thing to you. Let that sink in. That's I that's incredible. When when God looks at you as as you die in the waters of baptism and are raised again to new life, He says, "I am adopting you as My own and I'm pleased with you. You are beloved to me. You are my son. You are my daughter. You are now in my family, inseparably in my family, irreversibly in my family." You can think of it perhaps like a naming ceremony. You were born again some time ago. You you were the adoption papers were signed some time ago. But today, God stands before all and publicly declares your adoption. But it's even better than that. Look at our text and see the glory of the life you receive in Christ. Look at verse 4. We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. And in verse 5, "We shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His." In verse 8, "If we've died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him." And in verse 10, "The death He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life that He lives, He lives to God, so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." I mentioned that living in light of the death of our sin is hard. It's a struggle to live out the reality of the fact that your old self is dead. Sin will still feel like it has power over you. We don't just need a new name; we need a new life surging through our veins. We need a life that's strong enough to get us through the battles that are ahead. And the incredible news in our text is that baptism points us to the fact that we have no less than resurrection power surging through us now. Verse 4, he said that we that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so too, we will walk in newness of life. Did you catch those two things? What's driving this newness of life? "Just as Christ was raised from the dead"—same power. "By the glory of the Father," by God's own divine, life-giving strength. That's what empowers the new life of a Christian. You see the same sort of thing in Colossians 2, verse 12: "Having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised Christ from the dead." Now, these verses are primarily talking about the new life we experience right here and now. That's the entire context of Romans 6. He's not actually talking about a future resurrection here. He's talking about experiencing resurrection power right now in our life. We are united to Christ in His baptism now. All of the energy and power and strength of God that it took to raise Christ from the dead—not just to a a new corrupt human life, but to a new incorruptible human life. Well, God's saying it takes nothing less than that to see old, corrupt, Adam-like men and women live as spirit-filled Christians, as spirit-filled people of God who are being transformed into the image of His Son. You know, all of us who are baptized believers who are walking in the reality of this, in the in the light of these truths, do you realize that when you get up on a Monday morning and you think, "Oh, yep, off into my day"? Well, God, I hope You help me a little bit to live out this day in in light of my reality of Jesus. Or maybe we don't even ask. In order for us to overcome sin in our life, in order for us to live out the glory of God in our life, in order for us to be Christlike in our relationships and in our attitudes and in the way that we think and act and feel, we need nothing less than resurrection power. You can't you can't do any of that by yourself. You need God Himself every moment of the day infusing you with the same power that He exerted to raise Christ from the dead, just so that you don't lie. Just so that you speak of Christ when the opportunity comes. Just so that you respond to your irritating friends or family with grace. Just so that you can repent of that sin that you just committed. It's not easy. But yes, you need that kind of level of strength, that level of grace, that level of power, and that's exactly what God's given you. It's exactly what He's provided for you. And that's why Paul in Ephesians 3:20 could say, "Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we could ask or think, according to the power at work within us." He's given us all we need. Everything that we need for life and for godliness is supplied to us because of our union with Christ, because of the fact that when Christ rose from the dead, God says, "I will exert the same power to raise my people from their spiritual death." And our baptism, Elijah and Alicia, speak to us of that reality. So that as you face into difficulties, as you face into trials, as you face into what seems like insurmountable sin in your life, as you face into complex and difficult relationships where you just want to be able to display the grace of God to those around you, and it's so hard, God says, "Look back and see that I have raised you to newness of life, the same life that is at work to raise Christ from the dead." And lastly, I just want to close by saying that even though in this passage Paul is pointing us to the reality of a new spiritual life that is flooding through baptized believers right now in order that we might overcome sin in our life now, he is also—or it is also true that this speaks of a reality that is yet to come. Our baptism points us forward through the struggles of life, through the passing of time, and into eternity. For at the end of all things, when the Lord Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead, all those who are united to Him in His death and resurrection as symbolized by baptism will enjoy the fullness of those realities in their life forevermore. Elijah and Alicia, your baptism today speaks to you today of many things that have already happened to you. You have been united with Christ in His death as He faced the judgment that you deserve. You've been joined to Him in His death as you were freed from the slavery of sin through the death of your old man. You've been adopted into the family of God. You've received a new identity, a new name. And you've been given a new principle of life, a new power of life, as the Holy Spirit breathes into you the resurrection strength of God. But your baptism also speaks to you of things to come. Although we experience some of the freedom from the penalty and the power of the of sin in our life, one day, just as Christ was raised to absolute perfection, we too will follow his story, will follow his footsteps all the way through to that end. We will have our present union with Christ made complete and perfected when Jesus returns to this world. Then and only then will we fully know the perfection of all that our baptism speaks to us of. On that day, all that God is saying to you today about your deliverance, about your freedom, about your new identity and new life, will come to full fruition. And you will finally be free, not just from the penalty, not just from the power, but even from the presence of sin itself. And so let me close with Colossians 3 verse 1, where Paul wraps this all up in greater words than I could come up with. "If then you have been raised with Christ,"—we know you've been raised because we've seen it symbolized in your baptism—"if then you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God, and when Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory." It's the amazing thing. When we look on Christ in His death, God calls us to identify with Him, to say, "I deserve that death." To say, "I I want to claim his death as my death. I want to have my old self die." Where's the glory in that? Well, the glory comes through the other end, because when Christ who is your life appears, then all the the fullness of resurrection life, freedom from the power of sin, freedom from the presence of sin will be realized in your life and in the life of all those who are united to Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that the realities that You are speaking to us of in this embodied ceremony today would be made real to our hearts and would be made real in our lives. Lord God, we do not wish to be those who simply see something of what it is that You are saying in baptism and think that having the ceremony occur is enough. No, Lord. We wish to see death in our old man. We wish to see freedom from guilt. We wish to see a new identity placed on our life so that all around us know that we are children of God. We wish to see resurrection power at work in us so that we might be able to live as children of God who are being conformed to the image of Christ. Lord, we pray that we would live as baptized people, and that all that You are speaking to us of today would be true in our lives. And Father, we pray that we would look forward to the hope that is to come. Lord God, what a glorious salvation You've won for us. Bring it to completion, we pray, in each one of our lives. Lord Jesus, come quickly. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.