Everybody Sin!

AM Psalm 95* & 88 • PM Psalm 91, 92
Jer. 11:1-8,14-20 • Rom. 6:1-11 • John 8:33-47

* for the Invitatory

Today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans begins oddly: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” It feels like we have entered a room in the middle of a strange conversation, and in fact we have. Paul ended the previous chapter with a surprising argument. He had been stressing how all who are baptized are forgiven for sins and are given the incomparable gift of free grace. He went on to say that since Adam the catalogue and range of those sins had grown all the more obvious as religious laws laid out the particulars of sinful behavior. In a sense, there had been much more sinning as the laws developed, and consequently, since the resurrection, there had been much more granting of grace by a loving God.

Apparently, some took this to mean that, since sinning seemed to be a sort of pump that brought God’s grace into the world, it followed that we should all go into sinful overdrive to increase divine grace. The lesson of baptism is that we should sin as much as possible. That strikes me as petty dang funny, one more example of creative logic, a bit like the justification for “testing” whether a woman is a witch in Monte Python and the Holy Grail, with the logic in this case encouraging each of us to follow whatever awful impulses arise. It’s our duty as baptized Christians.

Interestingly, Paul does not dismiss this with an eye roll and “Oh, come off it” but engages it seriously, which suggests that the absurd line of reasoning did have some real currency, at least in Rome. Then I remember some of the ways scripture has been twisted, and how I have almost certainly torqued it to fit what I need, and it’s less of a surprise.

As Paul answers the strange argument at hand (“Shall we go on sinning?”), his lesson for us is to get back to basics and ask what it means to be baptized. God’s gift through Christ was forgiveness, “once for all,” grace unearned and unending. As people born through that gift into new life, our responsibility is to remember who we now are—who we became in baptism—and to live out the dream of the gift-giver as shown to us by God on his way to the cross.

Written by Elliott West

Elliott teaches history at the University of Arkansas. He has been a member of St. Paul’s for more than twenty-five years.