Raised with Christ (Trinitatrian Letter)

 Christ as God (detail), Jan van Eyck, Ghent Altarpiece, 

completed 1432, oil on wood (Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium)

Fr. Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians

April 2017

Raised with Christ

“What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”  (Romans 6:1-11)

As we experience Holy Week and Easter, this idea from St. Paul should be present in our hearts:  we as followers of Jesus participate in his death, and more importantly participate in his raised life in God.  For Paul, the death and resurrection of Jesus was not simply a historical fact, was not primarily a means by which punishment for sin was transferred from us to our Lord.  Jesus for Paul is the new Adam:  in him our lives are recapitulated and summarized.  But unlike the mythological ancestor of the race, our participation in Christ means death to sin, not biological or spiritual death.  And Life in Christ is newness of life, the opposite of death and the futility of mortal life bound by its own limits.  Being buried with Christ for Paul is the meaning of the Christian rite of initiation, baptism.  Being raised with him is what life in the spirit is.  

Thanks be to God.