I have recently been rewatching the “Lord of the Rings Trilogy.” If you are unfamiliar with it, this is a significant time commitment. The extended version of all three movies totals just about eleven-and-a-half hours of cinematic magic, and I love every minute of it. I love the story. I remember when I first read the books. Tolkien builds a world in which you are invited to live as a struggle between good and evil, light and darkness, plays out all around you. As I have been rewatching it, what has struck me this time is how well evil and good are portrayed. There are creatures, to be sure, which are always and forever evil, born and created in evil, but there are some who are seduced into it, who at times might even be redeemed. As for the good, especially the heroes, they are not monolithic things, but are complex, torn, and not one hundred percent good. Like us, there is evil or sin working through and strangling even the best of people. Temptation gets to even the best of them at times. Stories which are this well told remind us of the bondage of sin, the corrupting nature of it, that good and evil are not so simple when it plays out in real life.
We all live, move, and have our being in and around prisons we do not tend to discern very well. The problem is one’s prison can look and even feel like freedom. Early on in Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he says that in mankind’s rebellion, “God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” God gave them up to do what they desired to do, what they are now bound to do, what they could only do. So, their actions, their choices, operated within the bondage of sin within the confines of their prison. Sure, we tend to speak of it as freedom. After all, you can do what you want. But what you want is bound in service to, as Paul says, a debased mind. It is bound to self-righteousness, covetousness, envy, malice, gossip, slander, and greed. Which means that even when we want to do good, even when we think we know what the good is, we do not always navigate the path very well. The problem of sin is far deeper than the simple actions or choices we make.
As in Tolkien’s stories of Middle-Earth, the growing evil touches absolutely everything. What we believe to be normal, what we can think of as simply the way of the world, may very well be clouded in a darkness we do not even realize. It may even seem to us to be the light because we are so accustomed to it. Sin is not just the corruption of our hearts, but it is the atmosphere we breathe. C.S. Lewis once commented how in Hell all the doors are locked from the inside. That is, the real corruption of sin and evil is that we choose it, and we see any attack on it as an attack on ourselves, on our desires, on our hopes and dreams.
This means when the angel appears to Joseph and says he is to call the child “Jesus” because He will save His people from their sins, that He comes to go to war with all mankind loves and wants. He is truly a light shining in the darkness, doing not only what others did not do, but could not do. Our Lord is a radical outsider. This is the Word of God made flesh who attacks sin by taking it all, by daring it to claim what us true, holy, and pure. His coming is a war for the salvation of us all. The battle begins with John the Baptist proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Repentance for forgiveness, that is the message, and Jesus steps into the water. He comes to be baptized. He comes to repent. But repent of what? What sin does the Son of God carry? They are not His sins, but yours, not His evil, but the world’s. He comes to be washed in your sin. And the heavens tear open at this act, the Spirit descends on Him, and God declares, “You are My beloved Son; with You I am well pleased.”
The Father is pleased as the Son, now anointed by the Spirit, goes forth to set the captives free from their bondage by taking on the very sin the Father despises. The arrival of the Son of God is the coming of one who will expose our bondage to sin. It means He will uncover in you the things you love; the thoughts, words, and deeds you have amassed to establish your identity, security, and meaning in this life. He reveals what you believe to be freedom is actually the opposite. He says to you, “Your pride is now mine. Your greed is mine. Your arrogance and quick judgment, they are all mine. Your belief that if you are good enough, dedicated enough, wise enough, you will gain your eternal life, it is mine as well. So, clothed in all these sins, death does what it is called to do. The wages of sin is death. Therefore, death takes ahold of Jesus in the most brutal of ways and crucifies Him. For a moment it seems as if the poisoned atmosphere of sin has simply claimed another victim, and life will roll on as it always has. But no, not this time, for death reached too far and dared to take hold of the Son of God, and true freedom, true hope, true life breaks through an empty tomb for you.
This is the stunning and surprising working of our God. Roughly two thousand years ago, God was born, suffered, died, and rose for you, for your salvation. He came to not only reveal the bondage of sin, but to break open the doors that cage you. The coming of Christ is the coming of one who brings you out of the darkness of sin and death, who brings you out of the poisoned atmosphere, and for the first time invites you to breathe the fresh air of eternal hope. Of course, we may doubt this gift. We may wonder how it could be that a sacrifice all those years ago might have anything to do with us now? To this Saint Paul answers, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried, therefore, with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” Your baptism, your washing of regeneration is a connection to the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God.
In the gift of Holy Baptism, in that simple washing of water and the Word, you die with Jesus and rise again to a new life. This is the breaking open of the prison doors, the assurance which does not rest in your work, your great action, but binds you to the actions of your Savior. This small and lowly thing is the turning of the tide for you, the event that shifts the balance of the war in your favor. You are the baptized. You are bound now, not to sin and death, but to Christ the Lord. Paul goes on to say, “We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.” Is sin still a reality for us in this age? Yes, it is. We are not perfected beings without struggle, doubts, and failures. But the body of sin, the works of sin, the bondage of sin is brought to nothing. It does not rule you. It does not get the final say over any of God’s children. Why? Because we have already died to sin in Christ our Lord, in our baptism.
The great battle against the darkness, against the toxic air of sin is won by Christ alone. Not only does He reveal your bondage, but He provides a way of escape through His work. All this is now yours. Every time you confess your sins, every time you are broken and hurting because you have been seduced again by our evil age, you are now greeted with a reminder of who you are, a proclamation of your new reality in Christ. You are the redeemed. You are washed. You are made clean in the garments of Christ. You are the saints of God. You are heirs of eternal life, for you are the baptized. Therefore, you are born again to a new life, a life of hope, a life of promise.
So, my dear friends, you must now consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
