Happy Lord’s Day!

It is good to see you guys. Hope you’re doing well. We’ll be in Romans 6, so you can turn there now, and we’ll jump in in a few minutes.

Some of you know me a little bit now, and some of you know that I’m a baseball coach. That’s my day job. I’ve been in and around the game of baseball my entire life. I think from the age of four to thirty-three, I haven’t missed a season as either a player or a coach. It’s been my world. Every team that I’ve ever been a part of has had an identity, what they call in sports, a culture.

I’ve been on some pretty awful teams. I’ve coached some pretty bad teams as well. And usually, there comes a time in the season when the culture becomes “let’s just have fun,” and then you realize how hard that is when you’re getting killed every game. I try to coach teams now with an identity and focus on playing the game the right way. We can’t necessarily control the wins and losses, so I want our culture to be about working hard, executing, and doing things right.

But there was one team I played on that had an identity and culture unlike anything I’d ever experienced, and that was when I was in college at the University of Oklahoma. There was one thing, and only one thing, that mattered at OU, and that was winning. Winning was everything. We had practice shirts that had the number 540 on them, and we would touch a sign on the wall every practice that said “540.” Because Norman, Oklahoma, was 540 miles away from Omaha, Nebraska, where they hosted the College World Series. This was the goal. Everything we did was focused on this one thing. It defined us. It was the air we breathed. It was our culture.

For example, my senior year, we started the season 16-0. We were number one in the nation. Things were going well, and then we lost one game to Arkansas Little Rock, 16-1. No big deal, right? Wrong. After the game, we met in the clubhouse for over an hour. Chairs were lined up, and the coach just berated us. I mean, he would go one by one, and sometimes objects were thrown. Clipboards were broken, and everyone’s self-esteem was crushed. But the main message after that loss was that our performance on the field was not a reflection of who we were. We needed to wake up. That was his message. “You don’t lose to Arkansas Little Rock. You just don’t because you’re much better than them.” That’s what he told us. “Be who you are. Play better.”

Now, looking back, I disagree with a lot of my coach’s philosophy and how he communicated and treated us. But he wasn’t wrong. We were a much more talented team than Arkansas Little Rock, and we didn’t play like who we were—the better team. We were not playing out of our identity.

This concept of identity flows into so many areas of our lives, right? I mean, think about your own family identity. What is the culture in your home? What’s the culture at work or among your friend groups?

When theologian and ethicist Dr. Russell Moore adopted his sons from a tough orphanage in Russia, he knew his boys were starting to understand and live out of their identity as his children when they began to trust him and his wife, their new parents, for something as basic as their next meal. Moore, in his book Adopted for Life, said, “We knew the boys had acclimated to our home—that they trusted us—when they stopped hiding food in their high chairs. They knew there would be another meal coming, and they wouldn’t have to fight for scraps like they did at the orphanage.” This was the new normal. They were beginning to live out of who they already were.

Now, week after week, as we’ve been in the book of Romans, we’ve seen time and time again, we’ve been reminded constantly of our identity. Paul’s repeated himself often: “Justified by faith alone,” right? We are righteous before God because of Christ and Christ alone, and we continue to see just how precious the gospel of grace really is.

But if we’re honest, by Thursday afternoon, it doesn’t always feel so precious. Living out of our identity as Christians is not for the faint of heart. We all know how quickly the idols of our culture can come and invade our hearts and leave us empty. Our investments are down, our jobs aren’t giving us the satisfaction we need, or if only we had the new iPhone, the new Tesla, the new house, more money, maybe a better family. Now, you fill in the blank.

The truths we hear on Sunday can often be out of sight, out of mind when the week begins. It’s like the saying goes, “The longest journey we’re ever going to make is the journey from head to heart.” I mean, if I were to ask you, “What is your job as Christians?” I think many of us would answer with, “Conformity to Christ,” right? Looking more like Jesus. Being who we already are in Christ—the righteousness of God.

But if you’re anything like me, isn’t this the frustration of the Christian life? We can hear the truth about our identity in Christ on Sunday morning, rejoicing and resting in the gospel, but by Thursday, we’re at our wit’s end, discouraged, falling back into the same sin cycles, struggling to see, feel, and hear God—believe God—not living up to our status as righteous children of God.

And then we come to Romans 6, where Paul says to these Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome, and he says to us, “I have some medicine for you.” Conformity to Christ is our job as Christians, and Paul, in these 14 verses in Romans 6, will show us that Jesus’ followers are the walking dead. The followers of Jesus are the walking dead.

But before you check out because you’re thinking of that old popular show The Walking Dead and the last thing you need right now in your life is to walk around like a zombie—maybe you already feel like that—hear me out. Paul will actually show us that this is a good thing—that this is the abundant life. Jesus’ followers are the walking dead because, as the dead walk in Christ, they live a new life in a new land.

So if you’re not already there, Romans 6 is our text. We’ll jump into verse 1. This is the Word of God:

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?”

We’ll stop here for a minute. The question Paul is asking is one that he has heard over and over again in his ministry. Remember, Paul is the “grace over law” guy. In verse 1, he’s giving a response to what he just said in verse 20 of chapter 5:

“Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”

So the question he’s posing here is basically, “Since the nature of this grace is super-abounding grace, shouldn’t we indulge in sin? Shouldn’t we indulge in sin so that we actually make this grace abound even more?” Think about how ridiculous this logic is—it’s just bad math.

Picture a dad who just forgave his son. The dad told his son, “No football in the house with friends,” and then he leaves home, and his son grabs the neighborhood kids. They come into the home and play football in the formal living room, only to break the window. To his utter shock, when dad comes home, he totally forgives him—grace, grace, grace. The question in our text this morning would be like this kid thinking, “Hey, I actually want to do more wrong so I can enjoy more of dad’s forgiveness,” right? Dumb kid. Bad idea, right?

This is what’s going on in Paul’s question in verse 1 of our passage this morning:

“Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?”

Look at verse 2. Paul says:

“By no means!” (Or, in another translation: “Absolutely not!” Or, if I were the translator: “Heck no, bro!”)

Listen to Paul as he gives his reasons why:

“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 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.”

Paul here uses baptism as a shorthand for the conversion experience. Paul is talking about water baptism, but he’s not saying that baptism in and of itself is what unites us to Christ. Rather, baptism is a summary of what has happened internally—namely, a new creation or conversion. This is what unites