Paradoxes abound- Wednesday, 29th week in Ordinary time- Romans 6:12-18

How do you free yourself from sin? Have you ever felt more frustrated and disgusted with repeated sins that you have tried hard to shake off? The problem with battling sin is that we foolishly think that we can work this out or deal with it by ourselves. In order to rid ourselves from sin, in order to detach ourselves from this slavery, we need to attach ourselves slavishly to Christ. Yet this slavish attachment is done in freedom. Paradoxes abound.

Sin is slavery to our wants and to our desires. Paul is calling us to freedom from self though a union with Christ. For Paul, the Christian has entered a new life with Christ who reigns supreme over sin and death. Through baptism we are identified with Christ’s death and resurrection and our very being or self is transformed.

In one sense Paul is telling the Romans that God has already rescued the Christians out of the mud and cleaned them off through the bath of baptism, so that Paul admonishes these same believers to stay out of the mud, to resist any subsequent urge to return to the mud-bath from which they have already been rescued.