Category Archives: Alive to God

The Romans Challenge: Holy, Righteous, and Good

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“So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭7‬:‭12‬ ‭NIV‬‬

The Law ( God’s commandments) are not the problem. Sin is!

God gave the Law to the Jewish people so they could get an understanding of His character. God also gave the Law so sin could be revealed. The Law was intended to point out to all of us how much we need a Savior.

For example the Ten Commandments:

These are good moral laws that we should abide by, but have we?

If we have broken just one, we have become a lawbreaker. We have sinned.

The problem is not the Law, that is “holy, righteous, and good.” The problem is us. We are all sinners desperately in need of a Savior, and our Good God has provided for that need — Jesus!

Thank You Father for sending Jesus! What we could not do on our own, You did for us. Long ago You gave us Your Law so that we could understand how much we need You to give us a new heart — a heart that desires to obey You! Thank You for Your gift of salvation that changes everything in our lives and helps us to walk after Your Way!

The Romans Challenge: New Way of the Spirit

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“But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭7‬:‭6‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Today we start Romans 7.

God gave the law to us so we could see our need for something more. It taught us that we are unable to live completely righteous and holy on our own. Before Jesus entered our life, there was no power at all to keep us from living sinful. Our very nature, i.e. flesh, is bent toward sin.

When we come to Jesus that old self dies. We serve God, obeying Him and being devoted to Him, by the power of the Spirit! When we experience salvation, God’s Holy Spirit takes up residence within us. He begins to influence us in our decisions. He helps us!

We no longer are bound by the written law that God gave to the Jews in the Old Covenant. We experience the New Covenant where we are given a new heart that desires to obey God. The Holy Spirit works within us so we can live and “serve in the new way of the Spirit.”

Thank You God that You have provided all that we need to live for You! Holy Spirit, I ask you to help us to not only listen to You, but obey You! We know Your new way of the Spirit is freedom and life!

The Romans Challenge: The Trap of Sin

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“I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭6‬:‭19‬-‭23‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Our flesh, unrenewed and corrupt nature, wants to be free to do what it wants, when and how it wants to. It does not desire to walk in obedience to God and His will. Simply put, it wants its own way. But when we choose our own way above God’s we are choosing sin.

There is no way around it. Sin is a trap of enslavement. There are consequences of sin… death. When we are in the middle of living our own way, it can be hard to see the consequences that we will reap in the future. Sin brings not only death, but guilt and shame.

Years ago one of my kids chose a “Chinese Finger Trap” as displayed below:

In a small way it is a reminder of what sin will do in our lives. We think it is harmless. We think we can play around with it, but when we try to get away from it and the harder we pull we cannot.

“Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”

(Famous quote that I am unsure of its origin.)

We will do well to remember sin has its wages, what we are paid for what we do. Those wages are death. But God offers us a gift we do not deserve, something we could never earn on our own “eternal life.”

We can live free from sin’s entrapment, as we live totally surrendered, totally dependent, and totally obedient to God. True freedom is in being a “slave to God.”

The Romans Challenge: Alive!

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“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭6‬:‭11‬ ‭NIV‬

Alive — Regenerated, Renovated Heart, Born Again! (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary)

There is beauty in living “alive.” The only way to really understand this statement is to experience it. When you know the depths of what you are without Jesus and then experience Him, you know the death, darkness, and destruction you dwelled in. But thank God that we can live “alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

You and I were dead. There was nothing good in us. BUT GOD! He has taken what was completely broken, without hope… dead. And He has breathed His life into us, regenerated. He has renovated our hearts because He is the ultimate “Fixer Upper.” He takes the completely ruined by sin heart and makes it new! We are born again into a New Life! We are ALIVE!

Being fully alive in Christ is something you have to experience to understand at all. It is foreign to us. He breathes life into us so we can KNOW what His life is like: It is joy. It is peace. It is love. It is mercy. It is goodness. It is all these things and more.

The beauty of the New Life of being “alive to God” is the very thing that God desires for us! He wants us to live attached to Him receiving His life in every circumstance and situation. This starts with salvation, where we enter our relationship with God. It continues as we live day in and day out connected to Him in relationship!

We need to come to Him each and every moment of each and every day so we can truly experience living “alive to God!”