“A New Life”
Romans 6:1-11

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
Third Sunday after Pentecost—June 29, 2014

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Hank Williams Jr. is the son of the famous country-western singer.  His father died when he was very young.  He began singing his father’s favorite songs, and by the age of 14, Hank Williams Jr. was himself a star.  Despite that success, he didn’t lead a happy life.  For many years he abused alcohol and drugs.  He was often unable to perform at concerts because of his condition.  After so many cancelled concerts his career collapsed.  He says that year after year his life was getting worse and worse.

Following a suicide attempt, he was trying to put his life back together on a camping trip with friends, up high in the rugged mountains of Montana.  During a hike he slipped and fell off the edge of a cliff.  His friends watched in helpless horror as he plunged down over 500 feet, his body bashing against the rocks all the way down.  He was rushed to a hospital by helicopter: nearly every bone in his body broken; his skull shattered; such a large hole in his head that on the trip to the hospital he was actually holding his brain in his hands.

Hank Williams Jr.’s life was completely turned around because of what one of the doctors said to him that day: “There’s no way you should have survived this.  This should have killed you.  You should have died.  You have been saved for a reason.  You have been given a new life.  Make the most of it.”

Hank Williams Jr. recovered.  He recovered from his injuries, he recovered from his addiction to alcohol and drugs, he recovered from a failing career.  In one of the greatest comebacks of all time, a few years after the terrible accident that should have been fatal, Hank Williams Jr. was named the country-western music star of the year.

We all suffer from an affliction even more serious, even more fatal than those injuries sustained by Hank Williams Jr.  For we were all born with a deadly, hereditary defect called sin.  Because of our sin, WE should have died.  “For the wages of sin is death,” Paul says in Romans.  Your sins have earned you eternal death and damnation.  But, you will not pay the penalty, because the penalty has already all been paid, for you. 

Like Hank Williams Jr., you have been saved from death, given “A New Life.”  Paul puts it this way in today’s Epistle Reading: “All of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.  We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

Through Holy Baptism, you receive the benefits of Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice.  Through Baptism, God grants you forgiveness, washing away your sin for Christ’s sake.  As Paul says in Titus: “When the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared. . .  He saved us through the washing of rebirth-and-renewal-by-the-Holy-Spirit.”

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Holy Baptism is one of the means, along with the Word of God and the Sacrament of Holy Communion, through which the Holy Spirit works faith in your heart, faith to receive the gift of God: eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Through your Baptism, you are united with the death of Christ, the benefits of his sacrificial death are applied to you.

Because of your sins you should have died, and through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, that is exactly what happened.  For, Christ suffered and died for you, and through Baptism the merits of his suffering and death are imparted to you.  As Paul says, “All of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.”  Through Baptism you are connected to what transpired on Good Friday.  By means of your Baptism into Christ, the story of his suffering and death is not just a lesson in ancient history.  Your Baptism is like a cord stretching across the centuries, back to Good Friday, back to “a hill far away” and “an old, rugged cross.”  “All of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.”

Paul continues, “If we have been united with him in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.”  Just as Christ rose from the dead, everyone who has faith in Christ, who trusts in him for forgiveness, will also rise from the dead, to eternal life with him in heaven.  The end of earthly life is not the end; it is a passage to “A New Life,” forever with the Lord. 

And as you live out your life here on earth, you have been saved for a reason, you have been saved to daily live for him “A New Life.”  Today’s reading begins with a question and ends with the answer: “Shall we go on sinning . . . ?   . . .  don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”