“The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The response of some to that seems odd, doesn’t it? “Well, if grace is God’s response to sin then sin must have the power to inspire grace. More sin ­ more grace. There must be something actually good about sin if it means God extends more than enough grace to cover sin. Something good comes out of it after all.” We talked about the thief who argued that his crimes should not be punished because in being caught he makes the police look good. Were it not for his behavior there would be no need for them. It’s twisted, of course, but there are people who think that way.

But there were also those afraid that Paul was throwing out the baby with the bath and advocating a Christianity without any rules at all. They wanted to twist his freedom into something he never intended. They wanted others to think he was not only turning Judaism upside down but promoting a heresy that encouraged sin without consequences.

And that is why Paul steps in quickly to check that kind of logic. If Christ died for our sin then why would we want to use that as an excuse to sin even more? Why would we test the patience of God in that way?

But that is not Paul’s argument, is it? His case is that we died to sin and therefore it is no longer possible to live in it. Anyone who makes the argument for sin being something good has not understood at all what it means to have a new life. It does not mean unlimited freedom. It does not mean license to do whatever we please knowing that grace is unlimited. It means we have a new identity and a new life.

Refugees and Immigrants

We are constantly reading and hearing about refugees today being rescued from a certain death by compassionate people. In fact, many of us know Debbie Lascelles at Mercy Works who took a team to Greece to help refugees fleeing their countries. They are not immigrants who have made a well considered decision to leave their country for another with more opportunities. They are people leaving a country dominated by death and destruction. They are people being rescued and not people voluntarily searching out a new home. There is, as we all know, a big difference between an immigrant and a refugee. A refugee is desperate. An immigrant is willing and able to go through a process to find a new home. A refugee comes with nothing in their hand while immigrants most often have the capacity to wait. A refugee is fearful for their life while an immigrant is likely not.

Some of you are familiar with our country’s EB­5 program that was created in 1990 to give green cards to investors who put at least $1 million into a business or investment that will create at minimum of 10 jobs per investor. It was established to attract wealthy foreign citizens and steer them toward communities most in need of investment. We did it as a way to benefit our own economy and make it easier for wealthy investors to enter the country. On the contrary, we are not part of God’s EB­5 program. He does not need our assets. We are poor refugees who have been rescued from a sure death under the domination of an awful tyrant. We are refugees who have nothing to bring to this new life.

But it is even more than that. Immigrants and refugees alike go through a screening process and their new status is the result of what some call a “path to citizenship” or a ten step naturalization process that begins with filling out Form N­440 and ends with passing the test of citizenship and taking the oath -­ normally about two years. At any point in the process a person can fail to qualify for citizenship and the consequences are serious.

However, God has declared us citizens of his kingdom with no process at all. It is immediate and open to all who apply. There are no camps or settlements at the border. There are no tests or proofs of good behavior. We do not earn our citizenship by investing in the kingdom. We are rescued and given immediate citizenship in this new country. Ephesians 2:19 says, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household.” Philippians 3:20 says, “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;”

Finding Purpose

There is only one requirement and that is accepting the free gift of Christ and we are instantly, completely, and irrevocably new citizens of the kingdom of life. We have given up our old identity, handed over our passport and begun a new life. There is no such thing as dual citizenship. There is no such thing as deportation. There is no such thing as extradition because God has no treaty with Death. There is no way in the world to give up our citizenship or to return to that land from which we were rescued. This is a land in which we do not have rights because we do not need them. There is no fear of anything being taken away because we came with nothing and we have been given everything. Our total identity has changed and we now have been identified with Christ. I still have my old nature to contend with – ­ what Paul calls the body of sin ­- but I have a new identity. It is not my adhering to all the rules that makes me a citizen. It is my status as a rescued refugee who accepted the grace of God when I was powerless. I have discovered who I really am and have begun to understand what I was meant to be.

I read a fine article on Tony Bennett and how he became both an artist and a singer. His father died when he was only 10.

“After my father died,” he continued, “I thought, Who am I? What am I supposed to do?”

He found the beginnings of purpose during Sunday family gatherings at his house. Uncles, aunts, nephews and cousins would visit to keep his mother company. Mr. Bennett, his older brother, and his sister provided entertainment. Mr. Bennett sang and painted.

“They would tell me, ‘We love the way you sing, and we love the way you paint,’ ” he said. “They told me who I was. It changed my life.”

I think that is what life is like in this new place. We find out who we really are and what we are supposed to do. We are not just saved. Grace is bigger than that, isn’t it? God’s interest in us is bigger than that. We are saved in order to become who we are and help others do the same. Here is how Paul puts it in Ephesians 4: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”

Not Perfect

I know sometimes we are fearful our behavior will disqualify us. We know and Paul knew that having a new identity does not automatically make us perfect and flawless. It’s true that we bring some customs and habits and even a world view into the new country but the longer we stay the less we look like that other place. We pick up new tastes and new interests. We find a new language -­ even though we speak it with an accent. We raise our children according to the customs and beliefs of this new country. We begin to grow into this new identity. Yes, there are times when the king of the old kingdom shouts across the border that our failure to be perfect only means we are aliens here and we still belong to him. We fall prey to believing that it is perfection that keeps us here and there is bound to be something we can do that will get us deported or some serious infraction of the law that will get us extradited. But there isn’t. In fact, it is my experience that those times in my life when I am most straining toward perfectionism is when I am the least kind and graceful to others. I am unforgiving, impatient, bound up in control and earning my way that it leaves no room to show understanding to others. My perfectionism is little other than spiritual narcissism.

Yes, there are disciplines for when we sin but there is no deportation. We are not treated as aliens or strangers when we sin but as people who belong here ­as citizens. It is not a world without rules but a world without threats and arbitrary punishments for infractions.

New Bodies

But, how can Paul say we have been freed from sin? Does that mean that a genuine Christian no longer sins at all? Some believe that, in fact. Every time we sin is a reason to question our salvation. If we continue to sin then how can we say we have a new life free from sin? Well, I think (and I would agree with Dr. Martyn Lloyd­Jones) that while our old identity (the old man) has died we are still dealing with the effects of a fallen creation and the old nature. We still fall into sin but it does not become a way of life. It does not dominate us. We are no longer citizens of the kingdom of Adam. “Sin still dwells in the mortal body, but not in my true self; it is in my members, in my body, in my flesh.” This does not mean, as some early heresies believed, that the body is evil and we should consider everything physical as evil. That will take you in three directions eventually. Only the soul detached from the body is capable of being good. Therefore, the only thing that matters is the non­physical part of our life so we can concentrate everything on the soul and ignore the physical needs of people completely. This has led to an evangelism that only focuses on saving souls with no interest in the physical needs of people. It will also take you in the direction of believing that it does not matter what you do with the body because it is only the soul that will live in eternity. If what we do in the body does not affect our eternal life then we have license to do what we please as long as we are growing spiritually. The third direction is the mortification of the flesh or depriving yourself of all pleasure in the vain attempt to grow your soul. While some of the desert fathers and others took this to extremes we still have remainders of those who believe all pleasures are somehow suspect and the faith is best expressed by those who eliminate as much joy and pleasurable as possible.

Think of it this way. The body is infected but it is not evil. In fact, Paul talks in Corinthians about the glorified body. It is not the glorified soul but the glorified body. God created bodies to live forever and we will not be disembodied beings floating around the universe. We can get a glimpse of this in the resurrected body of Jesus. How was his body different after his resurrection? He could appear suddenly with no notice as he did to the disciples and the men on the road to Emmaus. He could disappear just as quickly as he did from the disciples in the upper room. He could mask himself so he was not recognized as he was with Mary at the tomb or the men on the road to Emmaus or even on the shore cooking fish in the last chapter of John. He could eat and drink. He could be touched and felt. He was not like Casper the ghost. The glorified body will be an amazing thing when it becomes once again what it was intended to be. We cannot even imagine it as Paul says in Corinthians 15: “There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

The Colony of Heaven

This is the promise of our new identity and the reign of life. We know it is not true yet but we wait for it. We are a colony of heaven as Paul says in Philippians 3:20 “and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”

I’ll close with this from Eugene Peterson’s book, “Practice Resurrection”:

“Why church? The short answer is because the Holy Spirit formed it to be a colony of Heaven in the country of Death. Church is the core element in the strategy of the Holy Spirit. From providing human witness physical presence to the Jesus ­inaugurated Kingdom of God in this world. Church is the appointed gathering of named people in particular places who practice the life of resurrection in a world in which Death gets the biggest headlines: death of nations, death of civilizations, death of marriage, death of careers, obituaries without end; death by war, death by murder, death by accident, death by starvation, death by electric chair, death by injection and hanging. The practice of resurrection is a deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection life. Life out of death. Life that trumps death. Life that is the last word. Jesus’ life.”