You give the healing and grace our hearts always hunger for.
”Yes I have created you to have that hunger, that desire to be filled and changed to experience the full shalom of a relationship with Me. From the beginning my attitude has been one of love, Mercy and Grace towards you all. It was only because of the rebellion in the garden that the full force of My judgement came to the fore. Yet I continue to reach out to My world offering My Son as the full means of grace through whom I can continue to rescue and change the world and build My kingdom. Enjoy My grace every day – it is My continual free gift to you, do not misuse it.”
Read Romans 6:1-14. As we saw last week the emphasis of this section is on “death to sin”. What are the practical implications of this teaching for us?
Firstly Paul lays the foundation, “We died to sin, how can we live in it any longer” vs 2. He brackets that statement with “Do not offer the parts of your body to sin … offer the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness” vs 13.
The basis for that statement lies in vs 3 “we who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death. We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death just as Christ was raised from the dead….. we too may live a new life. The Amplified bible describes baptism as a full immersion in liquid. In the case of the Christian, Jesus is the liquid. We are immersed (symbolically) in Him as our old sinful nature is washed away in death and we are raised then to a new life with a new relationship to Jesus and sin.
Paul then continues to play out this concept in the next paragraph describing our old self as having been crucified, in other words put to death totally. Here he uses the image of slavery to sin from which we have been released.
So what does this teaching mean for us practically? Something dramatic has happened to you when you are born again. You are set free from the bondage which holds every unsaved person so that they cannot help sinning. However this transaction through Jesus may not always be fully experienced in our lives. What is necessary, along with the spiritual release from bondage, we each need to change our attitude towards sin. Hence vs 11 “count yourselves dead to sin”.
This is a continual decision which we each need to make regularly when we are tempted to sin. We need to remind ourselves that we ARE dead to sin. We don’t need to beg God for victory, because the victory has already been won by Jesus on the cross. All we need is to believe the gospel and to not keep on trying to crucify ourselves. (Amplified bible).
Every Christian should continually remind themselves of this change of attitude which will change the whole way we live our lives in regard to sin.
At the same time we need not spend our lives mulling over our sinful state, the victory has been won. So instead we can concentrate on God’s love and grace and joy, while not neglecting the reminder “count yourselves dead to sin.”
God bless you all till next week as you meditate on this important teaching of Paul’s.