Day 201

2 Chronicles 1:1–3:17; Romans 6:1-23; Psalm 16:1-11; Proverbs 19:20-21

OVER THE LAST several days in Romans, we’ve gone back to Abraham and realized that it was his faith in God, not his obedience to a law, that activated God’s promise to him. We’ve learned that the law’s purpose was to reveal our helplessness and inability to achieve perfection before God. In other words, in our own strength, we will never be able to stand before God and claim that we deserve to be there because we’re perfect. We also learned that even while we were estranged and alienated from God, He loved us deeply enough to rescue us because He truly desires to be in a relationship with us.

Within that context, Paul discussed sin in our reading from Romans today. He asked the question, “Should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace?” (Romans 6:1). Paul emphatically denounced this idea: “We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin” (Romans 6:6).

Sin as an ongoing part of our lives is not supposed to be our reality. But living without sin is not something we can achieve on our own, any more than obeying the law was something the Jewish people could achieve on their own. Paul revealed that we are no longer on our own at all. When we put our faith in Jesus, we underwent a spiritual transformation. The person we were without God ended. We were recreated, reborn into a new life altogether —one intertwined with the divine nature of God through Jesus. Sin isn’t a default posture anymore. It boils down to who and what we choose to obey.

Paul said it like this: “Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living” (Romans 6:16).

When we see this as starkly as Paul did, our choice becomes obvious. We don’t have to live with one foot in darkness and the other in God’s Kingdom. This is not the offer of the gospel. We are invited to live as new creatures who are no longer enslaved to darkness in any way. That is the offer. And it is impossible to move in that direction without cutting ties with anything that would chain us to any other outcome than a collaborative life with Jesus.

MEDITATION:

Get all the advice and instruction you can, so you will be wise the rest of your life.