For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
Romans 6:6-7 (NIV)
Set Free by a Death
Paul raises the question himself, whether to go on sinning so that grace may increase, and he has no patience with it. We died to sin, he says, so how can we live in it any longer? All of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.
For we know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, and we should no longer be slaves to sin. Then the reason, in one line: anyone who has died has been set free from sin. We were baptized into Christ’s death, and a dead man is nobody’s slave.
Our old self was crucified with him, anyone who has died has been set free from sin, and Paul hands both of those over as things we know. I’ll say that much. How free a person feels on a bad night is further than I go.
The booth over the back of a single-screen house runs film one night a week, and Vern has been threading the projectors up there since before the seats were recovered. In April the manager’s job went to a kid who’d been there four years, and Vern found out from the schedule taped inside the booth. He’s been impossible since, and he still calls the new manager by the job the kid used to have.
The girl who sweeps the aisles is sixteen, and Vern corrects her over things she hasn’t touched. Tonight it’s the second reel, and she has never once handled a reel. She goes quiet and finishes the row. The manager comes up the stairs and tells him to cut it out, and nobody in that building is making excuses for him.
Vern goes down the booth stairs at the end of the night buttoning his coat and doesn’t stop in the lobby. The sentence about a dead man being nobody’s slave was written for him too, and I have gone whole weeks sounding exactly like him. The girl and the manager stack the folding chairs, six to a stack, and leave the booth light on for him.
A Prayer to Remember
Lord, thank you for a freedom that follows a death. Thank you that our old self was crucified with him, that anyone who has died has been set free from sin, and that both of those come to us as things we know. Work it down into the hours where I act like a slave.
In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
