Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text for this sermon is the Epistle, which I will read again, along with the four verses from Romans 6 that lead up to the Epistle:

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So far our text.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, recently a man in China spent 11 hours trapped in mud on the bank of a river because he was too embarrassed to phone for help. Rescuers found the 25 year old Chinese man after he had been reported missing after not being seen for four hours. He had become stuck in the mud while swimming alone, and the rescuers were shocked to find he had a working cell phone with him in a waterproof bag. The man explained that he had not used the phone to call for help because he was afraid of "losing face." For the same reason, out of fear of being put to shame, he then refused to let the rescuers remove his pants. Instead he kept his legs trapped in the mud for another seven hours until they finally got him out. One of the frustrated firefighters said, "He could have been out in one or two hours" instead of seven.

We in the West find such stories about the Eastern obsession with "saving face" ridiculous. We were astonished when a Chinese CEO committed suicide after his company's toys were found to have lead in them and he could not live with the shame of this revelation. And we are appalled when we learn that in Japan, it is considered an honorable act to commit suicide if you are failing to find employment and provide for your family. It is difficult for us to understand what might be going through such people's minds because our culture is so different from theirs. Sociologists say that places like China and Japan have shame-based cultures, where the highest value is placed on bringing honor rather than disgrace to the family name, or to the company, or even to yourself, as we see in the case of the man stuck in the mud.

No doubt, the Chinese and Japanese shame-based cultures go to a preposterously unhealthy extreme by making it shameful to even ask for help when you are in genuine need, or by making suicide a more honorable choice than failing in business. Their extreme emphasis on "saving face" leads many into foolish pride, and on the other hand leads people into despair when they lose face, not for their own moral failings, but for simply being unfortunate. But such cultures have preserved an emphasis on shame that is mostly lost in our own culture today, although we did used to have a greater sense of honor and shame.

Today we live in a culture that knows no shame. How often have you heard it said, "You have nothing to be ashamed of; you are entitled to be whatever you want to be, to live however you want to live"? This change has been rapid in our country, occurring over the past 50 years. I know that many of you scratch your heads at these changes, or perhaps your heads are spinning by how quickly we went from having objective standards about what is shameful behavior, to having no sense of shame at all. In the 1960s people cried out for individual freedom; they wanted a more tolerant society that allowed for greater private autonomy. And they got it. This was not simply a changing of laws, though that is part of it. The bigger change was a revision of social norms, a redefinition of what is acceptable behavior and what is not. You can see these changes even at the grocery store, where once it would have been shameful to let your kids run wild and misbehave in public, but now it's just no big deal. Or in business, where get-rich-quick schemes were once considered shameful means of selfish gain, but now are treated as legitimate. Or consider the most pervasive thing the quest for individual freedom has gotten us: we now have a culture of soft pornography literally everywhere, on billboards and television and print media, which teases and titillates young and old alike. In 1965 Del Reeves could sing about the girl wearing nothin' but a smile and a towel on a billboard; today we're lucky if she's even wearing the towel.

But if we dare to scratch beyond the surface of our soft porn culture by making a wrong-click on the web, we discover a culture of hard pornography, where any shameful act goes. Things that once were deeply shameful now are celebrated publicly: abortion, unscriptural divorce, sodomy and lesbianism-when will bestiality and pedophilia lose their stigma? Based on the speed of these other changes, it can't be long. It is true that there is nothing new under the sun; these shameful sins have always been around, but at least they weren't exposed to the light of day for all eyes to see.

Dear friends, I only mention such shameful things because they are extremely powerful tools of Satan to enslave us with darkness and death. It is objectively more difficult today than it was fifty years ago to avoid getting ensnared by sexual sins, and so we need to have our eyes wide open. In our Epistle, Paul spoke of the enslaving impurity and lawlessness that leads to eternal death, and our shameless culture makes it much easier to be captivated by such things which can drag us down to eternal shame. "The end of those things is death," Paul says. And so we pray in the Lord's Prayer that God would protect us from all these things; "Lead us not into temptation" we pray; and the Small Catechism explains that in this petition we pray that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature would not be able to drag us into "misbelief, despair, and other great shame and vice."

As Christians, we know that all our sins against God's Law are truly shameful and vicious and lead to death. Yet the humbling question is: has our knowledge of right and wrong, and honor and shame, made us any better than others in our culture? St. Paul answers for us: "There is no one righteous, not even one" in God's sight. We are all sinners who deserve condemnation in God's sight, even if we have managed to save face by keeping our sins out of the limelight, and behind closed doors. Our outward righteousness can accomplish nothing before God's judgment throne. We are all guilty; we all deserve shame rather than honor; we all deserve eternal death in hell for our sins.

But listen to the miraculous Good News of our Savior, Jesus Christ! The Father looked down upon this shameful, sinful, rebellious world and had compassion. He did not simply wipe us out or leave us to wallow in our shame, but He sent His only-begotten Son into our flesh to bear our sins, and to bear the shame of carrying the world's sins all the way to the cross. Though He had no sin in Himself, He freely took your guilt and shame upon Himself and suffered on the cross for you, in your place. He was stripped naked, beaten, lashed, crowned with dishonor, and elevated in a shameful death, to take away your guilt and shame forever. He did all that for you, turning away the Father's wrath and earning glory and eternal life for you rather than shame and eternal death. "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Wages are what we earn, what we deserve, and for our sins, we should get everlasting death; but the completely free and unmerited gift of God is everlasting life for forgiven sinners, by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Romans chapter 6 begins with a meditation on Baptism, which is God's means for delivering the benefits of Christ's work to us. Paul says that if we have died and been buried with Christ in Baptism, then we surely will be united with Him in His resurrection, in the free gift of eternal life. If we have been united with Him at the font, then surely we will live a new life even today. When God reached down from heaven and used human hands to baptize you with water, "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," then you were liberated from slavery to sin and became a slave of God, completely belonging to the One who purchased and won you with His own blood, so that you can be His own and live under Him in His Kingdom, and serve Him. So you don't really belong to yourself, but God has chosen you and taken possession of you and has placed you right here in the Christian Church to make you slaves not of sin, but of righteousness.

St. Paul says to you Christians, "Thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness... For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death."

I want to dwell for a minute on what St. Paul just said about our former slavery to sin. He says that Christians "are now ashamed" of their past sins. You can see here that shame actually plays an important part in our lives. After we have been rescued from eternal death by the forgiveness of our sins, we do not automatically forget our sins, nor should we continue to think that we are guilty anymore, since Christ died for them. But Paul specifically says that we continue to be ashamed of our sins.

Consider this analogy: if you had good parents or grandparents or other guardians who loved you and showed great kindness to you, I'm sure that you experienced not only guilt but also shame when they caught you doing something wrong. You were disappointed with yourself, and embarrassed that you could have brought dishonor to those who loved you. And then you apologized, and perhaps were punished, and they forgave you, but the shame did not just go away instantly. In fact, you might still blush with shame to this very day over things that you have done to others.

In Romans 6:21, Paul is speaking of a shame that comes from recognizing how ungrateful and rebellious we have been toward our God, who has done nothing but show love and kindness to us in our creation, redemption, and sanctification. And this shame over sin can be valuable to us, because it reminds us each day of our unworthiness in God's presence, how far we have fallen short of the glory of God, and it shows us that we need to live each day in repentance and faith, putting to death our old sinful flesh and rising up to newness of life by the power of Baptism.

But when you feel ashamed of how horribly you have sinned against your gracious Lord, then you need to remember that Christians live by faith, not by feelings. The promise of the Gospel is that, for the sake of Christ's patient suffering for your sins in His shameful death on the cross, you will not be put to shame on the Last Day. St. Peter writes, "Whoever believes in Jesus will not be put to shame." So the honor is for you who believe". Because of Jesus, you will not be shamed at the last judgment, but you will be honored with eternal life and blessing. "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." And in eternal life, there is no shame, for you will then be completely and perfectly sanctified, made holy.

Yet in the meantime, your Lord has plans for you, namely, your sanctification. Paul points out in our lesson that the fruit of sin is shame and death, "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life." In other words, now that God has justified you, He also is going to sanctify you, and after you die, take you to heaven.

The word sanctification means "being made holy." This is a process that will continue until your dying day. Through faith in Christ, you are saved even now, but you might define sanctification as the process by which God the Holy Spirit preserves and strengthens your faith in Jesus and moves you to do good works. [19 5. He will also sanctify in love those who are justified, as St. Paul says. Even though you are declared completely forgiven and righteous for the sake of Jesus Christ today, the Lord has plans for the rest of your life, good things that He wants to accomplish in and through you by sanctifying you, by making you holy by His Holy Spirit. Whereas there is great shame in sin, there is no shame in sanctification, because it is God's gift to those who trust in Jesus. Sanctification is not something that you can initiate, but it is something done by God in your life as a free gift when He baptizes you and then brings you each day to repentance and faith in Jesus, as you live out your Baptism. And so your sanctification doesn't happen apart from you, but in you. It is even appropriate to speak of your regenerated will cooperating with the Holy Spirit in all the works that He does through you. The fruit of your sanctification is the fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. On the other hand, the fruit of sin is things like sexual immorality, impurity, jealousy, fits of anger, idolatry, grudge-bearing, envy, and drunkenness.

It is God's will that you not be a slave to sin, but a slave to God in sanctification, as St. Paul says: "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God". A few verses later, Paul says that our sanctification occurs by the Holy Spirit, whom God freely gives to us. And so an important part of our sanctification is praying for God to work His sanctifying work in our lives, because Jesus promised that your Father in heaven will "give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him".

But what is most important is to remember how God sanctifies you: by the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. And it probably sounds like I am just repeating myself here, because I am: the same holy gifts of God that have brought you to faith are the ones that bring about your sanctification. The tools that the Holy Spirit uses to sanctify you, to make you holy, are Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion, as well as hearing and learning God's Holy Word. If you want to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in your sanctification, then keep putting yourself in the places where God's Holy Spirit does His sanctifying work on you: in God's Holy Church. Note well that our sanctification occurs not by our individual efforts, but it happens as the Holy Spirit keeps us in a holy community, the Church, gathered around Christ's holy Word and Sacraments. Satan's goal is to isolate us from this community and keep us away from Christ's sanctifying gifts. And so our main task as Christians is to each day make use of God's holy Word and Sacraments, and to pray for the Holy Spirit, who will continue to speak this beautiful truth into your ears until your dying day: "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord." In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.