6.2 Live Now Not Under Sin But Under Grace

(Romans 6:12-14)

Sin must no longer rule in your mortal bodies, so that you obey the desires of your natural self. Nor must you surrender any part of yourselves to sin to be used for wicked purposes. Instead, give yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life, and surrender your whole being to him to be used for righteous purposes. Sin must not be your master; for you do not live under law but under God’s grace.

6.1 Through Baptism We Are Dead To Sin, United With Christ

(Romans 6:1-11)

What shall we say, then? Should we continue to live in sin so that God’s grace will increase? Certainly not! We have died to sin – how then we can go on living in it? For surely you know that when we were baptized into union with Christ Jesus, we were baptized into union with his death. By our baptism, then, we were buried with him and shared his death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from death by the glorious power of the Father, so also we might live a new life.

For since we have become one with him in dying as he did, in the same way we shall be one with him by being raised to life as he was. And we know that our old being has been put to death with Christ on his cross, in order that the power of the sinful self might be destroyed, so that we should no longer be the slaves of sin. For when a person dies, he is set free from the power of sin. Since we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that Christ has been raised from death and will never die again-death will no longer rule over him. And so, because he died, sin has no power over him; and now he lives his life in fellowship with God. In the same way you are to think of yourselves as dead, so far as sin is concerned, but living in fellowship with God through Christ Jesus.

The Christian Life

Christianity is the most widely distributed of the world religions, having substantial representation in all the populated continents of the globe.

Like any system of belief and values—be it Platonism, Marxism, Freudianism, or democracy—Christianity is in many ways comprehensible only “from the inside,” to those who share the beliefs and strive to live by the values; and a description that would ignore these “inside” aspects of it would not be historically faithful. To a degree that those on the inside often fail to recognize, however, such a system of beliefs and values can also be described in a way that makes sense as well to an interested observer who does not, or even cannot, share their outlook.

The instruction and exhortation of Christian preaching and teaching concern all the themes of doctrine and morals: the love of God and the love of neighbor, the two chief commandments in the ethical message of Jesus (see Matthew 22: 34-40). Application of these commandments to the concrete situations of human life, both personal and social, does not produce a uniformity of moral or political behavior. Many Christians, for example, regard all drinking of alcoholic beverages as sinful, whereas others do not. Christians can be found on both the far left and the far right of many contemporary questions, as well as in the middle. Still it is possible to speak of a Christian way of life, one that is informed by the call to discipleship and service. The inherent worth of every person as one who has been created in the image of God, the sanctity of human life and thus of marriage and the family, the imperative to strive for justice even in a fallen world—all of these are dynamic moral commitments that Christians would accept, however much their own conduct may fall short of these norms. It is evident already from the pages of the New Testament that the task of working out the implications of the ethic of love under the conditions of existence has always been difficult, and that there has, in fact, never been a “golden age” in which it was otherwise.

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In the meantime, the followers of Christ are to manifest in their conduct and relationships that they have been reconciled with God. This is the instruction of the entire New Testament and a legacy from the Old: the inseparable connection between religious belief and moral and ethical behavior. The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings had insisted on it, and the New Testament continued that accent. This life is variously referred to as righteous, sanctified, godly, faithful. The books of the New Testament are filled with instructions about this life not only in an inward sense but in relation to neighbors, enemies, family members, masters, servants, and government officials, as well as in relation to God. These instructions draw upon the Old Testament, the words of Jesus, the example of Jesus, apostolic commands, laws of nature, common lists of household duties, and ideals from Greek moralists. All these sources were understood as having one source in a God who expects his own faithfulness to be met with faithfulness in those who have been reconciled as the family of God.

The Salvation

The kingdom of God seems not to have survived as the central subject of the church’s message. According to the New Testament, the church did not identify itself as the kingdom, and in its preaching it began to speak more of salvation. The term generally referred to a person’s reconciled relationship to God and participation in a community that was both reconciled and reconciling. In this sense, salvation was a present reality—but not completely. The consummation of salvation would be in a fullness of life beyond the struggle, futility, and mortality that mark this world.

Paul believed that in the ultimate fulfillment of God’s purpose, salvation would be cosmic in scope. The realm of redemption would be coextensive with the realm of creation. This meant that finally even the hostile spirit powers that, according to the New Testament, inhabit the heavens, earth, and subterranean regions would be brought into harmony with the benevolent plan of God. This final vision differs from that of the Book of Revelation, in which the end is characterized by the vindication and reward of the saints and the damnation of the wicked.

Kingdom of God

According to the New Testament, the central message of Jesus was the kingdom of God. He called for repentance in preparation for the kingdom that was “at hand.” The kingdom of God referred to the reign or rule of God, and in Jesus’ ministry that reign of God was announced as present. The presence of the kingdom, however, was not full and complete, and, therefore, was often referred to as a future event. Students of the New Testament have argued over whether Jesus and his followers expected the kingdom of God to be fully present in their generation. The unresolved state of that debate is registered in the two expressions often used to characterize the New Testament teaching about the kingdom: “already” and “not yet.”

The Holy Spirit

Some of the prophets of Israel had characterized the “last days” as a time when God would pour out his Spirit on the whole of humanity. The New Testament claims that promise was fulfilled in the days of Jesus. The Spirit of God, an expression representing the active presence of God, is therefore used throughout the New Testament; this entity is variously referred to as the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Spirit of Christ, or the Spirit of truth. The Spirit empowered Jesus, and it enabled the church to continue what Jesus had begun to do and to teach. Within the individual disciple, the Spirit produced the qualities appropriate to that life and equipped the person to work and serve the good of the community. Understandably, the category “Spirit” was subject to a wide range of interpretations and created problems in many churches. The New Testament reflects the struggle to find clear criteria for determining if a congregation or a person really was influenced by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ

The New Testament presents its understanding of Jesus in titles, descriptions of his person, and accounts of his word and work. In the context of Judaism, the Old Testament provided titles and images that the New Testament writers used to convey the meaning of Jesus for his disciples. He was portrayed, for example, as a prophet like Moses, the Davidic king, the promised Messiah, the second Adam, a priest like Melchizedek, an apocalyptic figure like the Son of man, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, and the Son of God. The Hellenistic culture provided other images: a preexistent divine being who came to earth, accomplished his work, and returned to glory; the Lord above all caesars; the eternal mediator of creation and redemption; the cosmic figure who gathers all creation to himself in one harmonious body.

The Gospels present the ministry of Jesus as the presence of God in the world. His words revealed God and God’s way for his people; his actions demonstrated the healing power of God bringing wholeness of body, mind, and spirit; his sufferings and death testified to God’s relentless love; and his resurrection was God’s sign of approval of Jesus’ life, death, and message. St. Paul and others developed views of Jesus’ death as sacrifice and atonement for sin and of Jesus’ resurrection as guarantee of the resurrection of his disciples. Documents written during persecution (see 1 Peter, Revelation) interpreted Jesus’ suffering as the model for Christians in the hour of martyrdom.

The God

Nowhere is the continuity of the New Testament with the Old more clearly or more consistently presented than in its teaching about God. Any view that the God of Jesus or of the early church was different from the God of Judaism was rejected as heresy. The God of the New Testament is creator of all life and sustainer of the universe. This one God, who is the source and final end of all things, takes the initiative to seek with love all humankind, entering into covenants with those who respond, and behaving toward them with justice and mercy, with judgment and forgiveness. God has never left himself without witnesses in the world, having revealed himself in many times, manners, and places; but the New Testament claims in Jesus of Nazareth a unique revelation of God. The person, words, and activity of Jesus were understood as bringing followers into the presence of God. In the days of its beginning within Judaism, the church could assume belief in God and focus its message on Jesus as revealer of God. Beyond the bounds of Judaism, however, faith in the one true God became basic to the proclamation of Christianity.

The New Testament

The New Testament consists of 27 documents written between ad 50 and 150 concerning matters of belief and practice in Christian communities throughout the Mediterranean world. Although some have argued that Aramaic originals lie behind some of these documents (especially the Gospel of Matthew and the Epistle to the Hebrews), all have been handed down in Greek, very likely the language in which they were composed.

From a literary point of view, the documents of the New Testament are of four major types or genres: gospel, history, epistle, and apocalypse. Of these four, only gospel seems to be a literary form originating in the Christian community.

The New Testament is not a collection of maxims, reflections, and meditations dissociated from historical concreteness. On the contrary, its documents focus on a historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth, and address the problems faced by his followers in a variety of specific contexts in the Roman Empire. This concern with historical events, persons, and situations does not mean, however, that the New Testament submits itself to purely historical and chronological interests.

Like the theological themes of the Old Testament, those of the New Testament are varied and rich in content: about God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Kingdom of God, Salvation, and Ethics.

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The Old Testament

It is remarkable that Christianity includes within its Bible the entire scriptures of another religion, Judaism. The term Old Testament (from the Latin word for “covenant”) came to be applied to those Scriptures on the basis of the writings of Paul and other early Christians who distinguished between the “Old Covenant” that God made with Israel and the “New Covenant” established through Jesus Christ (see, for example, Hebrew 8:7). Because the early church believed in the continuity of history and of divine activity, it included in the Christian Bible the written records of both the Old and the New covenants.

The Old Testament may be viewed from many different perspectives. From the viewpoint of literature, the Old Testament—indeed, the entire Bible—is an anthology, a collection of many different books. The Old Testament is by no means a unified book in terms of authorship, date of composition, or literary type; it is instead a veritable library.

Generally speaking, the books of the Old Testament and their component parts may be identified as narratives, poetic works, prophetic works, law, or apocalypses. Most of these are broad categories that include various distinct types or genres of literature and oral tradition. None of these categories is limited to the Old Testament; all are found in other ancient literature, especially that of the Near East. It is noteworthy, however, that certain types did not find their way into the Old Testament. Letters, or epistles, so important in the New Testament, are not found as separate books (except for the Letter of Jeremiah in some manuscript traditions). Autobiography, drama, and satire are not found at all. It is particularly striking that most Old Testament books contain several literary genres. Exodus, for example, contains narrative, laws, and poetry; most prophetic books include narratives and poetry in addition to prophetic genres as such.

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The Importance and Influence of the Bible

The importance and influence of the Bible among Christians and Jews may be explained broadly in both external and internal terms. The external explanation is the power of tradition, custom, and creed: Religious groups confess that they are guided by the Bible. In one sense the religious community is the author of Scripture, having developed it, cherished it, used it, and eventually canonized it (that is, developed lists of officially recognized biblical books). The internal explanation, however, is what many Christians and Jews continue to experience as the power of the contents of the biblical books themselves. Ancient Israel and the early church knew of many more religious books than the ones that constitute the Bible. The biblical books, however, were cherished and used because of what they said and how they said it; they were officially canonized because they had come to be used and believed so widely. The Bible truly is the foundation document of Judaism and Christianity.

It is commonly known that the Bible, in its hundreds of different translations, is the most widely distributed book in human history. Moreover, in all its forms, the Bible has been enormously influential, and not only among the religious communities that hold it sacred. The literature, art, and music of Western culture in particular are deeply indebted to biblical themes, motifs, and images. Translations of the Bible, such as the Authorized Version (or King James Version, 1611) and Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible into German (first completed in 1534) not only influenced literature but also shaped the development of languages. Such effects continue to be felt in emerging nations, where translations of the Bible into the vernacular help to shape language traditions.

What is a Bible?

Bible, also called the Holy Bible, is the sacred book or Scriptures of Judaism and of Christianity. The Bible of Judaism and the Bible of Christianity are different, however, in some important ways. The Jewish Bible is the Hebrew Scriptures, 39 books originally written in Hebrew, except for a few sections in Aramaic. The Christian Bible is in two parts, the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament. The Old Testament is structured in two slightly different forms by the two principal divisions of Christendom. The version of the Old Testament used by Roman Catholics is the Bible of Judaism plus 7 other books and additions to books; some of the additional books were originally written in Greek, as was the New Testament. The version of the Old Testament used by Protestants is limited to the 39 books of the Jewish Bible. The other books and additions to books are called the Apocrypha by Protestants; they are generally referred to as deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics.

The term Bible is derived through Latin from the Greek biblia, or “books,” the diminutive form of byblos, the word for “papyrus” or “paper,” which was exported from the ancient Phoenician port city of Biblos. By the time of the Middle Ages the books of the Bible were considered a unified entity.

The Bible is a religious book, not only by virtue of its contents but also in terms of its use by Christians and Jews. It is read in practically all services of public worship, its words form the basis for preaching and instruction, and it is used in private devotion and study. The language of the Bible has informed and shaped the prayers, liturgy, and hymnody of Judaism and Christianity. Without the Bible these two religions would have been virtually speechless.

Both the confessed and actual importance of the Bible differ considerably among the various subdivisions of Judaism and Christianity, but all adherents ascribe some degree of authority to it. Many confess that the Bible is the full and sufficient guide in all matters of faith and practice; others view the authority of the Bible in the light of tradition, or the continuous belief and practice of the church since apostolic times.

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5.5 Unshaken Confidence In God

(Psalm 11)

I Trust in the LORD for safety.
How foolish of you to say to me,
“Fly away like a bird to the mountains,
because the wicked have drawn their bows
and aimed there arrows
to shoot at good men in the darkness.
There is nothing a good man can do
when everything falls apart.”

The LORD is in his holy temple;
he has his throne in heaven.
He watches people everywhere
and knows what they are doing.
He examines the good and the wicked alike;
the lawless he hates with all his heart.
He send down flaming coals and burning sulfur
on the wicked;
he punishes them with scorching winds.
The LORD is righteous and loves good deeds;
those who do them will live in his presence.

5.4 The Holy Spirit Gives Us New Life By Washing Us

(Titus 3:4-8)

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior was revealed, he saved us. It was not because of any good deeds that we ourselves had done, but because of his own mercy that he saved us, through the Holy Spirit, who gives us new birth and new life by washing us. God poured out the Holy Spirit abundantly on us through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that by his grace we might be put right with God and come into possession of the eternal life we hope for. This is a true saying.

I want you to give special emphasis to these matters, so that those who believe in God may be concerned with giving their time to doing good deeds, which are good and useful for everyone.

5.3 We Are Baptized Into One Body

(1 Corinthians 12:12-26)

Christ is like a single body, which has many parts; it is still one body, even though it is made up of different parts. In the same way, all of us, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether slaves or free, have been baptized into the one body by the same spirit, and we have all been given the one Spirit to drink.

For the body itself is not made up of only one part, but of many parts. If the foot were to say, “Because I am not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,” that would not keep it from being a part of the body. And if the ear were to say, “Because I am not an eye, I don’t belong to the body,” that would not keep it from being a part of the body. If the whole body were just an eye, how could it hear? And if it were only an ear, how could it smell? As it is, however, God put every different part in the body just as he wanted it to be. There would not be a body if it were all only one part! As it is, there are many parts but one body.

So then, the eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” Nor can the head say to the feet, “Well, I don’t need you!” On the contrary, we cannot do without the parts of the body that seem to be weaker; and those parts that we think aren’t worth very much are the ones which don’t look very nice are treated with special modesty, which the more beautiful parts do not need. God himself has put the body together in such a way as to give greater honor to those parts that need it. And so there is no division in the body, but all its different parts have the same concern for one another. If one part of the body suffers, all the other parts suffer with it; if one part is praised, all the other parts share its happiness.

5.2 Baptism On The Feast Of Pentecost

(Acts 2:36-41)

“All the people of Israel, then, are to know for sure that this Jesus, whom you crucified, is the one that God has made Lord and Messiah!”

When the people heard this, they were deeply troubled and said to Peter and the other apostles, “What shall we do, brothers?”

Peter said to them, “Each one of you must turn away from his sins and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins will be forgiven; and you will receive God’s gift, the Holy Spirit. For God’s promise was made to you and your children, and to all who are far away- all whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”

Peter made his appeal to them and with many other words he urged them, saying, “Save yourselves from the punishment coming on his wicked people!” many of them believed his message and were baptized, and about three thousand people were added to the group that day.

5.1 Baptism of Jesus

(Matthew 3:13-17)

At the time Jesus arrived from Galilee and came to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. But John tried to make him change his mind. “I ought to be baptized by you,” John said, “And yet you have came to me!”

But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so for now. For in this way we shall do all that God requires.” So John agreed.

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he came up out of the water. Then heaven was open to him, and he saw the Spirit of God coming down like a dove and lighting on him. Then a voice said from heaven, “This is my own dear Son, with whom I am pleased.”