Cut The Cord

Sin is no longer your master.   Romans 6:14

When Christ saves you, he sets you free from the tyranny of sin. Grace invades your life, and Christ flies his flag over you. You will still have many struggles with sin, but sin is no longer your master.

Grace puts you in an altogether different position. Sin is still a powerful enemy, but when Christ invades your life, sin does not rule over you. You belong to Christ. Grace reigns where sin once ruled, but two flags cannot be planted on the same ground. Sin and grace may both be present in the same place, but they cannot both rule. Where grace plants its flag, sin no longer reigns.

Sin will still be a menace to you, but you are no longer under its rule. There is all the difference in the world between a menacing neighbor and an occupying army.

Many Christians feel defeated. They understand that God loves them and that Christ died for them, but their problem lies in the habits of thought or patterns of behavior that have become ingrained over many years.

Some think of grace as God smiling down benignly, rather like a helpless parent who has no idea how to control an unruly child. They have tried to change but have lost heart. You’ve no doubt experienced what the power of sin does to you. You feel its pull and may even feel defeated by it, but the power of grace is greater than the power of sin. God’s grace sets prisoners free.

Think about Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels tied down by thousands of tiny threads. Now picture someone cutting the cords that bind him. It may take a long time to cut all the threads, but every stroke of the knife brings greater freedom. That’s a picture of how God’s grace works in our lives.

The apostle Paul tells us he was once an angry, violent blasphemer, but when God’s grace invaded his life, he was completely changed: “I persecuted God’s church. But whatever I am now, it is all because God poured out his special favor on me—and not without results. . . . [God] was working through me by his grace” (1 Corinthians 15:9-10). God’s grace in your life will not be without results either.

For further reading, see 1 Corinthians 15