Fr. Stephen De Young: We’ll go ahead and get started. When we get started in just a moment, we’ll be picking up at the beginning of St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, chapter six. It’s been a little while since we did the second half of chapter five, and the second half of chapter five was pretty dense as we worked through it. We talked about how the second half of Romans 5, beginning with versre twelve, is probably one of the most, I guess you could say, controversial passages in the Bible, in that it’s the text from which the doctrine of original sin developed in the West, and so that’s one of the major difference between Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity. It also was one of the main texts used in the Reformation to argue for a lot of Protestant doctrines, but I’m not going to go through all that again, because it took us a fair amount of time last time.

So eventually—I can’t really say “soon” any more—that Bible study will be available on Ancient Faith. By the time anyone’s hearing this recording, it’ll already be available, but our lead time right now is close to a year. [Laughter] So it’s going to be a while.

But to get us caught up, as we mentioned all the way back at the beginning— And again, by the time anyone’s hearing this, the first Bible study on St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans will also be available, and you can go back and listen to the introduction. But in Rome, under the Emperor Claudius, the Jewish community had been expelled from the city for a period of a couple of years, so this had sort of fragmented the Christian community in the city of Rome, because of course in the Christian community there were Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians in the Church in Rome. A big chunk of them, the Jewish Christians, had been expelled from the city, and then the Gentile Christians had sort of gone on on their own, and now, after this period of time where they’ve gotten used to going on on their own, the Jewish Christians have now returned. So St. Paul is concerned about making sure that the Church sort of re-integrates itself, that we don’t end up having two churches: this one Jewish Christian church and this other Gentile Christian church for everybody else as two separate things.

And so, as we’ve been going through St. Paul’s epistles so far, he’s been trying to show how all human beings face the same problems, have to deal with the same enemies, and how Christ is the solution to sort of the peril in which human beings as such find themselves. In earlier chapters he started by going back to Abraham, because of course the main thing which the Jewish people saw as separating them from the Gentile people—well, one of them— The two main things were, one, being descended from Abraham, and, two, having receive the Torah, having received God’s revelation in the Old Testament, and having the Law and the customs that derive from it.

So St. Paul started by going back before the Law, to Abraham—because of course Abraham lived a good at least 500 years before Moses received the Torah—and saying, “Let’s look at how Abraham became God’s friend. Let’s look at how Abraham encountered God.” And this was all before the Law; it was before Abraham was even circumcised, so the Law wasn’t even in the picture then. The law of God, the Torah got added later.

Then in Romans 5 that we just discussed, he went back even further than that; he went all the way back to Adam. He said, “So this includes now everybody, because everybody’s descended from Adam,” and talked about how our real problems are not whether we’re keeping the Torah or not—it’s not whether we have tassels on the fringes of our garments; it’s not whether we eat pork—the real problem we have is that everyone sins and therefore everyone dies, going back to Adam. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a Jew or a Gentile: you sin and you die. And so Christ is the solution to that for everybody, regardless of ethnicity, culture.

This is sort of where we ended last time, was St. Paul making that point, that, through the sin that began with Adam, death came into the world, death reigned over the world until Christ came, and now, through Christ’s death and resurrection, now we as human beings receive life, eternal life, and that life is spreading now with the Gospel to everyone. So now— He’s been talking about this in a broad sense, talking about Adam and Christ, the first man, the second Adam, making this big theological point about life and death and Christ and Adam and sin, the power of sin. And now in chapter six, as we start here, he’s going to narrow this down to: Okay, here’s how this gets applied to you as a person who’s part of the Christian community in Rome. Here’s how this manifests itself in your experience, in your actual life.

Unless we have any leftover questions or comments or mutterings or grumblings or anything else, we’ll go ahead and get started in St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, chapter six, verse one.

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue to sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” So he’s picking up where he left off. Right at the end of chapter five, he talked about how the Law, the Torah, had been added, had been given later, so that trespasses would increase. And what he meant by that was he had made a distinction earlier in chapter five where he said: Well, look. Adam sinned by God gave him a commandment. God directly told him: You can eat from all the trees; don’t eat from this tree. Adam went and did it anyway, so he sort of deliberately sinned. He knew the rule, he chose to break the rule, he died. But St. Paul made the point that even people later—we’re now thousands of years later, minimally— Even people whom God never directly gave a command, like all those Gentiles who didn’t receive the Torah—God didn’t give them commandments directly—they still sinned and they still died. They just didn’t know what sin was exactly and what to do about it.

So he made the point that the Torah is added so that now people will know what sin is. Sin’s become trespasses, because now you know the rules that you’re breaking. You’re not just sort of wandering, trying to figure out what to do. You now know what the sins are and you have a means of dealing with them, because the Torah included the whole sacrificial system for repentance. So this gives you a huge advantage, knowing— being able to see what your sins are, knowing how to repent of them and be reconciled to God. So the Torah gets added so that trespasses will increase—people will know that they’re sinning—and because they know, they can now repent. And so he says, “Where sin abound”—and now there’s all these trespasses—“but God’s grace also abounded,” because now there was repentance and there was forgiveness of those sins.

So he starts chapter six by saying, “Well, should we just go ahead and keep sinning and not worry about it? Because, hey, the more we sin, the more God forgives! So God’s forgiveness comes in; should we just not worry about it?” Of course, he says, “… No.” [Laughter] He actually says more than no. What’s translated as “certainly not”—this is the New King James—is actually a really odd form of a Greek verb. It’s only used 64 times in the whole New Testament, and 48 of them are St. Paul saying what’s translated as “certainly not” here. It’s called an optative verb, but it’s a really old, antiquated form of verb, but he’s using this weird form… This is not just no; this is our super-strong no. This is “heck, no!” [Laughter] That’s why they say, “Certainly not!” which is sort of the more polite version. That idea is obviously clueless.

And then he further begins his next point by saying, “How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” Now in terms of what he means by that, he’s going to go on and explain.

So in verse [three]: “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Notice, we’re used to seeing “Jesus Christ,” and now we see “Christ Jesus.” The word order is reversed. Don’t read a ton into that, because in Greek word order doesn’t matter; in English word order is very important. We do our sentences: subject, verb, object. They don’t do that in Greek. In Greek, the form of the word tells you what part of speech it is, so you can put them in any order you want, which really helps if you’re writing poetry and stuff, or writing hymns, because you can just move everything around so it sounds good. But what it should remind us is, once again—and I make this point only because every once in a while somebody asks me a question—“Christ” is not Jesus’ last name! [Laughter]

Q1: I actually told my friends that: it’s not a name; it’s a title.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, it’s not his last name; it’s not St. Joseph and St. Mary’s last name that they passed on to him. I once had somebody ask me what Jesus’ middle name was, because they thought that was his last name. But it’s a title. Remember, Christos in Greek is Meshiach in Hebrew, “Messiah,” which means the anointed king. So you can say Jesus the King, or you could say King Jesus: it means the same thing. So that’s the equivalent here. Putting it in front is like saying King Jesus.

So this “or do you not know?” that’s his way of saying, “Here’s what I mean.” So he says that “as many of you”—we talked about “as many of you as have been baptized into Christ” that we sing: that means everybody. Every one of you, if you were baptized into Christ, that means you were baptized into his death. What does that mean? That means when you went under the water, you died with him. That’s what he’s saying. That’s why we put people all the way under, because getting sprinkled doesn’t represent dying. Nobody ever died from having some water flicked in their face. Dogs and cats act like they’re going to die if you flick water in their face, but no human has ever died from having water flicked in their face. When we’re baptized into Christ, we die with him. We die with him.

He continues: “Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” When you’re put under that water, you died. When you came back up, that was the beginning of a new life, in the same way that Christ died and then he rose from the dead. So what’s his point? All the things that characterized you before you were baptized, back before you were a Christian, before you were baptized, now are dead. What’s he referring back to? Well, he’s referring back to Adam. Remember he says, “Sin came into the world through one man (through Adam) and then through sin death came to everyone, because all sinned.” So we’ve all followed his pattern. Like father, like son and daughter, all the way down to us. We’ve sinned like him and so we’ve died like him. And when we’re born, we’re born with the fallen human nature that we inherit from him, all the way down. So we’re born mortal. We’re not born mortal and then if we sin at some point, all of a sudden, well, now we can die. [Laughter] We’re born mortal; we inherit that.

And so what St. Paul is saying is that person—that person who you were, with everything you inherited—died when you went into the water, dead. And the person you became when you came out of the water was a new person, a different person, who’s now after the pattern of Christ in his resurrection. So this is related to the concept of eternal life. We talked about this a little bit when we were reading St. John’s gospel. We tend to think of eternal life as something that comes after this: we die, our soul goes somewhere, the resurrection happens, we get raised from the dead, and then eternal life starts; that’s when it starts, when we get resurrected when Christ returns; we start a new life then. That’s not what St. Paul is saying here. What St. Paul is saying here is that when you came up out of the water, that’s when your new life started; that’s when your eternal life started. So eternal life is something that begins now and continues into eternity.

This is important because what’s St. Paul’s whole point here? St. Paul’s whole point here is we can’t go on sinning. We can’t go on living the way we used to. Do you think when you’re raised from the dead on the last day when Christ returns and you’re in the kingdom, are you going to be sinning? This is not a trick question. Nobody wants to get recorded. [Laughter] The answer is no! The answer is no, you’re not going to be sinning in the kingdom. But the point is, that kingdom has started now. You’re a member of it now. So St. Paul’s asking: How could you go on sinning now? How could you go on living the way you used to, back before? It’s not possible. It’s not possible.

And he’s making this argument for a couple of reasons, the main one being: What’s the criticism that’s being leveled against him by some of the Jewish community? “Well, he’s teaching against the Law. He’s saying you shouldn’t follow the Torah. He’s saying we can just get rid of it. He’s saying it’s just this extra thing. He’s saying you don’t have to keep the commandments any more; you can just live however.” So St. Paul’s making the point: “No, no, no, no. Quite the opposite. Quite the opposite: it’s impossible to continue living the way you used to. It’s impossible.”

“For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection.” St. Paul uses “resurrection” and “new life” both ways. He’s not denying that there’s going to be a resurrection on the last day; he’s just saying that begins now. This is important for understanding how St. Paul thinks. There’s a bunch of fancy words for this, but the simplest way of talking about it is for St. Paul there’s an already and then there’s a not yet for all of these things. If you’re a Christian, you already have all of the promises of Christ in some sense: you already have a new life, your eternal life has already started, you’re already living a different type of life, and you already have the Holy Spirit. There are all these things that are already true. But those same things in their fullness are not yet; we don’t have them yet. We’re literally going to be raised from the dead when Christ returns. That doesn’t mean we haven’t already been raised to a new life now in baptism. He just said we were. Both of those are true, and they’re not two separate things for St. Paul. For St. Paul, the kingdom has already begun, and the kingdom is going to come. Both are true at the same time.

“Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin.” So he says— He reiterates: This person who you were, who was a slave of sin, is dead. If you’ve been baptized, that person is dead. Dead people can’t sin any more, right? Again, not a trick question. They’re just [lying] there, they can’t— [Laughter]

Q2: Well, they don’t have bodies.

Fr. Stephen: Right, so they’re dead. Now he brings in the idea of slavery here, which is important. I’ve mentioned this before, but for St. Paul there’s a distinction between sin and sins. We talk about sins, and when we talk about sins, plural, we mean what St. Paul was talking about with trespasses: God gave a commandment, you broke it. We’re saying that’s a sin, and when we do that a lot, we have a whole bunch of sins, plural, to confess and to repent of. But St. Paul also talks about just sin in general, like in Romans 5, in the last chapter, when he talked about sin reigning through death, that sin is sort of— I’m sorry, it was actually death reigning through sin—but that death was reigning through sin, that death was like this overlord, and through the power of sin, where sin is this power— And that goes all the way back to almost the very beginning of the Old Testament. In Genesis 4, when Cain is angry at his brother Abel and is thinking about killing him, God comes to him and says, “Cain, sin is crouching at your door.” He’s talking about it like it’s an animal that’s out there, ready to pounce on him. He says, “It seeks to master you; you must master it.” He says, “There’s going to be this battle between you and sin. It’s going to try to overcome you; you need to overcome it.” Of course, we know Cain doesn’t; Cain falls prey to it.

But that’s how St. Paul is talking about sin here when he talks about being slaves of sin, that sin comes in and masters us; sin comes and takes control of us. We tend to think of it, again, as these voluntary actions, of sins, but this is sin as a force or a power. This is why in the Orthodox Church we talk about the passions, the sinful passions. “Passion” comes from the same root as “passive,” that something acts upon us. We become passive, and it takes control. Our pride isn’t just: we choose to do something that is proud sometimes, but pride actually takes control of us and controls our actions. I do this instead of that because of my pride—or envy, or anger. Anger is a pretty obvious example. We become angry, and we’re not in control; we’re not choosing to do what we do now. Our anger is in control, and we do things and then afterwards we look back and regret them. We say we lost control. Sloth is another very obvious example, laziness: we’re not doing anything. Lust, same thing. People talk about they get fired up with passion, and they do things that they then regret because it takes control of us.

So this is what St. Paul is talking about. It’s not just that, oh, yeah, once in a while we did some bad things in our past life; it’s that sin had taken control of us. That’s why it’s not enough just to go and offer the 87th sacrifice for this week— the 87th goat for this week’s sins. That’s not really dealing with the problem. It’s managing the problem. We talked about how the Torah sort of manages sin. It sort of keeps it under control. But for it to be dealt with, what has to happen? We as slaves have to die, because once we die— If you’re a slave, once you die, you’re free! That’s sort of the only way out if you’re a slave. And so, through baptism, through Christ’s death and resurrection, we die with him, and so now that slavery’s over, and we arise to a new life where we’re free from sin.

And that’s why he’s saying that the sins are a result— The individual actions are a result of being controlled by sin. So if we’re no longer the slave of sin, then there’s no reason for us to commit those actions any more. Christ has given us this new life, and now that we’re alive and we’re free, we can live in a different way.

“Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him.” Christ died; he rose again: he’s not going to die again. That’s the difference between Christ’s resurrection and other people who were raised from the dead in the Bible, like Lazarus. Lazarus lived a few more years, and then he died again. The widow of Nain’s son lived a few more years and then died again. Christ is never going to die again. But what St. Paul is saying, what that means for us is that if we’ve died with Christ and been raised to new life, death has no power over us either. This is what we celebrate at Pascha. I know that’s 50 days from now, but this is why we celebrate Christ trampling down death by death, because if he’s defeated death, then death has no hold over us either.

“For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life that he lives, he lives to God.” He’s making a parallel here between Christ’s death and resurrection, and ours. So Christ died to put away sin; he didn’t die to his sins because he didn’t have any. But this means, for us, the sinful person we used to be and the sins we’ve committed, that’s now dead. In Christ’s case, he very literally— After he rose from the dead, he ascended to God the Father, so his life was to God very literally, to God the Father. But for us, we can now live to God, toward God, in God’s presence, because we’ve been set free.

“Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So he says: Consider yourselves, in your head—wrap your head around this—that this is what has happened to you. If you’ve been baptized, then this is what has happened to you, that that slavery to sin, that sinful person, the old person is dead. Leave him behind. Start new. Start again.

Q3: St. Paul made that statement. Did people really understand him? Did they understand the idea of what he was talking—? Because it’s very mixed together, and I don’t know how much they knew at this time.

Fr. Stephen: Well, these are people who had heard— They hadn’t heard St. Paul preach. Most of his letters were written to people and churches where he’d been; a lot of them were churches that he’d started, so they’d heard him preach for some time. So they sort of would know what he was talking about. Church in Rome he hasn’t been to yet. But they have received preaching from other people. I think this is why, like in this passage, St. Paul is talking about baptism, because the apostles at the time, they had a way they baptized people. He could refer them back to that. This was a liturgical thing. They’d been baptized; they’d seen people baptized. They’d been to those services and heard the hymns that were sung and what was preached and that kind of thing, so he’s referring them back to that and reminding them of that and explaining more what that means. So that’s why they kind of grasped onto it.

We’re not living in that culture, at that time, and so that’s why I have to do all this explaining; that’s why we have to have Bible studies. [Laughter] It’s like when Metropolitan Joseph sends a letter to the church, like he just did—it’s going to be in the bulletin this week, if you haven’t seen it on the internet already—he sends a letter to us, we read it, we understand what he’s talking about, even though he probably uses some phrases and stuff that if I took those and I showed it to somebody, even an English-speaker— Well, even England. Like if I took it to England, there would probably be some phrases in there that they’d be like: “What’s he mean by that?” especially if they weren’t Orthodox. Do you know what I mean? There’d be phrases, they’d be like: “Huh? What does that mean?” or they’d misinterpret that.

Q3: So it’s that language that he’d use on his audience.

Fr. Stephen: Right, because it’s being written in our time, and it’s being written in the context of the Church. He can make references to hymns and things that we sing and we recognize them immediately that someone else wouldn’t. It’s the same kind of thing. We’re just now 2,000 years later, so we have to work a little more to get back to: “Oh, okay, that’s how they did this. That’s how they understood this. This was their custom at the time,” that kind of thing. I mean, the big obvious one with St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans is we don’t really have a church that’s like a significant part Jewish converts and then another part Gentiles, where there’s this— these issues back and forth. We don’t have that; it’s a different time. So that’s a big example, where their situation is just sort of different.

So the things that are super pertinent to them aren’t as directly pertinent to us, so we have to figure out what the point St. Paul is making, and then apply that to our own situation now. So it’s not identical, but, yeah.

“Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.” I’ll pause there. He talks about our mortal body. This is what we received from Adam. The story in Genesis 3 is not about how human beings became wicked and evil. I know you may have been told that, especially at Western churches; that’s not what it’s about. It’s about why people die; that’s what Genesis 3 is about. It’s about why people die. People become more and more wicked after that, and it is the first time people sin, because that is how we become mortal. It’s about why people die.

And the Fathers teach the story in Genesis 3 where they’re given clothing—that’s how it’s usually read by modern people, that God kills some animals and makes them clothes. That’s not how the Fathers understand that story! [Laughter] What it says is— Because it doesn’t say God made them clothes; it says God kills some animals in front of them and then he gives them skins. He gives them skins. So what that brief story is about is he kills the animals in front of them to show them what death is, because they haven’t seen it before. They don’t know what it is. Kills the animals before them to show what death is and then their bodies change. I know that sounds strange, but let me put it to you on the reverse end. The reason the Fathers say this is when Christ returns and we’re raised from the dead, is our body going to be identical to the one we have now?

Q3: That’s crazy!

Fr. Stephen: No, and when we get to 1 Corinthians 15, St. Paul talks about that at some length, how we have a mortal body now: it’s going to be clothed with immortality; it’s going to be different. It’s going to be like Christ’s body after he rose from the dead. That’s going to change. What the Fathers are saying is and how they’re interpreting that passage in Genesis is that the same thing happened sort of in reverse at the fall, that Adam and Eve’s bodies before, in paradise, in the presence of God, were different than they became afterwards. Afterwards, they became mortal bodies, bodies that are going to die, more like animal bodies.

Q3: So are you talking about the shape of a body or the material the body’s made out of?

Fr. Stephen: St. Paul seems to indicate in 1 Corinthians 15 the material the body is made out of, but it’s more in the likeness of an animal after the fall, because animals die. Since they’re our flesh, there’s not a lot of difference when you study biology between our current human flesh and mammal, and other mammals. But there was and there will be, is what Scripture is saying.

Q3: Because at the beginning we were created to be like God, so in the image of God.

Fr. Stephen: Right.

Q3: So the image that we have, it looks like the image of God, but how we will be after death—

Fr. Stephen: The likeness.

Q3: The likeness, okay.

Fr. Stephen: Right, that’s the distinction the Fathers make between the image and the likeness.

Q3: It’s confusing!

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, the image is— And we’ll talk about this more when we loop around and get back to Genesis. We’ll spend a lot of time going through this, but just a little bit of this is to understand what St. Paul is saying, and not just here, because St. Paul— And this is one of the ways that people misread St. Paul. He’ll talk about “body,” just your physical body, and he’ll also talk about “the flesh.” They’re two different words.

Q3: The same?

Fr. Stephen: Not in St. Paul! [Laughter] We use them the same way in English, but the word for “flesh” is more like meat. It really is! In Hebrew, it’s the same word; it’s basar. It’s the same word. I guess the Arabic word for meat is similar, isn’t it?

Q3: No. For flesh? LeHm means meat.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, meat. What’s the Arabic word for meat?

Q3: Lehma.

Fr. Stephen: Okay, it’s different.

Q3: LeHm.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, so he uses those two words differently. When he’s talking about “the flesh,” he’s talking about our sinfulness; when he’s talking about “body,” he’s talking about our physicality, and those aren’t the same thing, because Christ has a physical body, but he’s not sinful. So there’s nothing wrong with having a body, but when he talks about the flesh, he’s talking about the sinful part of us, not our physical body, but the sinful part of us.

And that’s what he’s doing here by putting “mortal” in front of “body.” He doesn’t just mean our physical body; he’s talking about the person who we are, which is still mortal— We’re still going to die. We’re going to have eternal life and that eternal life starts now, but there’s still going to come a day when I stop breathing, and my soul departs from my body, and then the resurrection’s going to happen. So I still have a mortal body. I still have— Even though I have— That person who I used to be once I’m baptized, I don’t instantly, when I come up out of the water, have a new body that’s like Jesus’ resurrection body. That doesn’t just happen all of a sudden. I still have this same flesh body that I inherited from Adam and Eve. I still have it. That means I can still sin if I choose to, and that’s what St. Paul’s addressing here. He’s saying there’s going to come a time in the kingdom when we’re not going to be capable of sinning. We’re not going to inadvertently sin; we’re not going to accidentally sin in the kingdom after the resurrection. But now, even though we’ve died and risen with Christ in baptism, we can still sin. And so he has to say, “Don’t let sin reign in your mortal body. Don’t let sin come to control you again.” Not just: “Consider yourself dead to that like you don’t have to worry about it,” but “Consider that dead like you’re not going to go back to it. You’re not going to let sin come to control you again.”

And you notice, he says, “Sin reigns through your body so that you obey it in its lusts, in its passions,” where it becomes in charge.

“And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.” So the word “instruments” there, probably a better modern translation would be “tools,” because you use tools to do things. I take a hammer; I use it to drive a nail. I take a wrench, I use it to screw or unscrew a bolt. He’s saying you can offer yourself, your members, your parts— That’s not just your phyiscal parts, but that’s your mind, your soul. You could offer them to be tools for sin, where sin is in control of you and it’s using your parts to accomplish evil things, to accomplish wickedness, to cause harm, to cause violence. Or you could offer all of your parts to God to use as tools, to do righteousness, to do justice, to do good. He’s saying you should do the latter and not the former. You should offer yourself to God so that God can do things through you rather than what used to happen, which was sin working evil in the world through you.

So when he’s talking about being freed from slavery, he doesn’t mean now you’re free to do whatever you want. To quote Bob Dylan again, “You’ve got to serve somebody.” Right? So it’s either going to be God or it’s going to be sin. One of these two things is going to be acting through you in the world, and he’s saying now that God through Christ has given you this new life and you’re dead to that old way of living, now this is what it means to live that new life, and that’s you offer yourself to God so that he can work his will and do his good in the world through you.