Romans 6:12-23

Back when the COVID-19 pandemic was just starting in March 2020, the news ran a profile of a man in Tennessee who stockpiled tens of thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer to resell on Amazon. The story goes that he rented a U-Haul truck and drove 1300 miles across rural Kentucky and Tennessee, buying up all of hand sanitizer, face masks, and disinfectant wipes he could find. The next day he started posting his haul on Amazon to sell. Because hand sanitizer was no where to be found, he was able to charge six, seven, eight times what he paid.

He called it “crazy money”. 

The technical term for what he did is called ‘arbitrage’. That is, he exploited the difference in supply for hand sanitizer, facemasks, and paper towels (remember how there was a shortage of all those things?) and demand (remember how everyone wanted those things?) in order to make a profit. This happens all of the time in other parts of the economy. Wall Street and day traders do it when they buy and sell stocks and bonds in a matter of seconds, hoping to make a small profit on the difference between what they bought the stock for and what they sold it at. Wholesalers also essentially do the same thing. They connect sellers with buyers. 

Making a profit can be a good thing. But there is a fine line between making a profit and hoarding things to drive up the price to make more money. That is called greed. Amazon soon caught wind of what this man was doing and closed down his online store saying that what he was doing was ‘against their policies’. When the Times reporter asked him about his motivations, he was honest, “I could potentially put my family in a really good place financially…”

It turns out that the day after that Times article ran, the man decided to donate all of his stock of hand sanitizer and wipes to charity.  I don’t know for sure why he had such a change of heart, but I’m guessing that the fact that he was suddenly under investigation by the Justice Department for price gouging changed his motivations.

This is an example of the phrase, just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. That is part of Paul’s message in our reading from Romans this morning. Just because God has given us free will and the ability to make our own decisions and has promised to forgive our sins doesn’t mean that we should keep on sinning. Here is part of what we read: 

So what should we do? Should we sin because we are under grace and not under law? No! Surely you know that when you give yourselves like slaves to obey someone, then you are really slaves of that person. The person you obey is your master. You can follow sin, which brings spiritual death, or you can obey God, which makes you right with him. In the past you were slaves to sin—sin controlled you. But thank God, you fully obeyed the things that you were taught. You were made free from sin, and now you are slaves to goodness. 

Let’s define a few things. First, sin: sin is the word used in the Scripture to talk about the thing that separates us from God. Paul’s message in Romans is that we human beings are in serious trouble. It’s not just that we mess up or screw up every now and then, or that we don’t have enough good vibes. What Paul claims is that we are under the sway of a moral sickness that has infected and corrupted the human heart and mind. We all have moral and spiritual scoliosis, according to Paul. We’re bent inwardly.  

And this has serious consequences. Our thinking is futile, without hope, he says. We’re greedy, lustful, vengeful, and hard-hearted.  We’re full of love, yes, because we’re created in the image of God and so we have a sense of love because God himself is love and we’ve been stamped with the image of the Creator. But sin distorts even of our love. We love the wrong things and even the good things we love, we can love them in the wrong way. In the process, we offend God, hurt others, and make a fool of ourselves. Paul’s summary description of our problem is this: “[we] exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”  (1:25)  

But it’s not just individuals, for Paul, who are disordered. It’s human societies. It’s human structures. It’s the ‘powers and principalities’, as Paul calls them in his other letters, who compete for the loyalty of the human heart and twist and corrupt it and lead us away from God. His point is that all of humanity finds itself under the curse of this malignant force that is called ‘sin’. Sin, basically defined, is a ‘malign force that twists human nature and a dead weight that needs to be shouldered.’

I once heard a Presbyterian pastor say something like the reality of sin is the one Christian doctrine that can be proved. I can’t prove to you the resurrection just like someone can’t disprove it, you take the claim that God raised Jesus from the dead after he was crucified as a part of faith. But sin, that’s easy to prove – you just have to watch the news or go on Facebook to see it in action.

The other word that Paul uses a lot in this passage is grace. Grace means a gift that we don’t deserve. It’s favor that we haven’t earned. It’s love that we receive without asking for it. The Christian message is that God is full of grace and that God is gracious to you and for you. In spite of all of the bad stuff that we just talked about with sin and even the opening story of the guy hoarding hand sanitizer to make a profit, God is still gracious. And not just that. It is not just that God forgives our sins through Jesus’ death, it is that he did that and also restored us (and really the whole world) to be in right standing with God.  

There is a story in the Gospel of John about Jesus, the Pharisees, and a woman caught in adultery. The story goes that the Pharisees (who are religious leaders, supposedly upright, upstanding people) drug a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery to Jesus. Adultery was a capital crime in Jesus’ time. The Pharisees were ready to stone her and put her to death. They brought her to Jesus as a test to see whether he would follow what the law said needed to be done and stone her to death as a punishment for her adultery. 

The story goes that Jesus just sits there, doodling in the dirt. The Pharisees become angrier and angrier – are you going to follow the law and stone her, they demand of Jesus. Jesus’ response is a complete surprise:“he who is without sin can cast the first stone.” 

They are stunned. Of course, no one is without sin. What can they say back? Humiliated, the Pharisees, one by one, drop their stones and leave until it is eventually just Jesus and the woman. 

“Woman, where are they?” Jesus asked, “Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, Lord,” she said.
“Neither do I condemn you,” Jesus told her, “go, and from now on sin no more.”

This story is an example of what God’s grace, mercy, and justification are like. Jesus rescues this woman from impending death and restores this woman’s dignity and humanity. He doesn’t excuse or condone her sin – that’s the justice part of it. His parting words to her are to “go and sin no more.” But he also doesn’t condemn her.  This is the grace of God and the good news of the gospel, the power of salvation for all who believe – we are no longer condemned. Go and sin now more.

Paul’s message in Romans this morning is don’t go back. You’ve been rescued from impending death, you’ve been freed from sin, you’ve been given a new lease on your life – don’t go back to your old ways. It’s a dead end. Instead, turn your life in a different direction. Look to Jesus and his ways. Turn to God because he’s already turned to you. Here is the second part of what we read in Paul’s letter to the Romans: 

In the past you were slaves to sin, and goodness did not control you. You did evil things, and now you are ashamed of them. Those things only bring death. But now you are free from sin and have become slaves of God. This brings you a life that is only for God, and this gives you life forever. The payment for sin is death. But God gives us the free gift of life forever in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We’ll close here: when we become Christians it is like when a business posts a sign ‘under new management’. Usually what a business is trying to say is that they recognize the old management sucked and there is a new sheriff in town, so give us another chance with your business.

Something similar happens as Christians. The old management, what the Scriptures call ‘sin’ or the ‘ways of the world’ sucked. The old management abused its people, didn’t care about its customers, and ran the place into the ground. The Christian message is that God got fed up with the old management and kicked them out and installed new management. The is the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. That new management is named Jesus Christ. His title is ‘Lord’, which is a really formal and old school way of saying that he’s in charge. 

The Lord Jesus rules the world with grace and truth, fairness and equality. He forgives sins, heals the sick and broken hearted, and frees people from whatever kind of prison they find themselves in. The message this morning in Romans is don’t go back to the old management, however enticing they are or however hard they try to recruit you. Don’t go back and instead stick with the new management, whose ways bring goodness and life to you and to the whole world. 

Amen.