You Have a Place at Grace - 7/6/2025

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal.2:20).

The baptismal thrust of this passage comes in conjunction with Romans 6:6, which reads “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.” This verse follows Paul’s teaching on baptism in a verse also located in the Small Catechism: “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” (Romans 6:4). Another passage is Romans 8:10: “And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”

There’s this powerful current in Paul’s writings conveying the dead-but-alive reality of Christians bearing sinful flesh and the Holy Spirit. Lutheran theology has always boldly confessed this in its teaching on man being simul iustus et peccatur (simultaneously saint and sinner). Faith exists in sinners. The guarding and keeping of the Holy Spirit is fought by the Old Adam seeking life apart from God and His mercy. These battles are anything but easy.

This is a reality, a past action completed and ongoing in the present: “I have been crucified with Christ.” It’s who He is because of God’s work to kill and make alive; to transfer from the Kingdom of Darkness into His marvelous Light. God does this glorious work in those baptismal waters wherein His Word of promise is located by divine decree. God puts His Name in Baptism and the recipient has what He says, no exceptions. This dying-and-rising formula is the rhythm of Christian living. Daily the Old Adam needs to be killed and daily the baptized believer needs all of Jesus. Baptism brings these promises into the life of the baptized and are held by faith in the one walking in Christ.

 Faith, then, sees us as ones made anew in Christ Who lives in the baptized. The Church lives by faith, not by sight. We don’t hope in a dying world with dying people. We look to Jesus, die daily, and live knowing the end is glorious. Jesus is already there, alive, living and reigning on His throne of grace. With Paul and all the saints, our confession still goes forth, one of hope when we say “the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for Me.”

-By rev. Ryan J. Ogrodowicz, You Have a Place at Grace, July 6^th 2025

Grace Lutheran Church - Brenham, Texas

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod