“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!
“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.”
“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!”
“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” Romans 6:1-2 NIV
(Today we start Romans 6)
Baptism symbolizes a very important fact in the life of a follower of Jesus. We follow Jesus in His death, burial, and resurrection. Our old sinful life that we all lived before Christ is to die. It is “buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised form the dead… we too may live a new life.” Being “dead to sin” enables us to live the “new life” that God has given us.
If I were physically dead — at the funeral home, lying in a casket — it would be impossible for me to sit up and eat a donut that you may bring and pass before my nose and my mouth (even the cream filled ones…). I will not take a bite. I am dead to that donut. Our enemy will bring temptation to sin into our lives, but through Jesus we do not have to take a bite. We can live our lives dead to sin!
How can this be? I have this nature, a sinful one, that desires to do things that are wrong all the time… We cannot forget that WE HAVE NEW LIFE! This life is the Holy Spirit living in us. He comes as our Helper to help us to say “no” to the temptations. He comes as the Power to enable us to live our lives “dead to sin.”
We can live free of the patterns of sin that we have been chained to i.e. addictions, bad habits, sinful thought patterns, etc. We don’t have to “live in it any longer.”
As a Christian, it is one thing to slip up and say a hateful thing, do a sinful action, or make a wrong choice, chose to do a sinful act…God has given us a remedy for such a scenario…
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9 NIV
It is a whole other thing to embrace our sinful choice, sit down for coffee with it, and indulge in it day in and day out… that is not being dead to it… That is preferring the sinful choice over obedience to God and His word. It is loving God less and our sin more… In this case, we are not dead to sin, we have chosen to let it grow, fester, and consume our lives.
Thank you God that You have provided all that we need to die to sin! We cannot die to sin on our own. The Holy Spirit is very willing to fill us with His life so that there is no room for sinful patterns to grow. God has given us His Word so we can keep our way pure. (Psalm 119:9) As we read His Word, live according to what the Word says, and ask the Holy Spirit to help us in our weakness, “we too may live a new life” that is dead to sin!
“so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 5:21 NIV
(This Week is Romans 5)
Before Jesus comes into our lives, all you and I will truly ever know is the death, the darkness, and the destruction of sin. On our own, we are helpless to overcome sin’s reign – its power and its influence. The struggle is so real. We know the good we should be doing, but we choose to do otherwise… this is sin. (James 4:17) Then the consequences we see of our wrong choices have a ripple effect. This influences even more wrong choices. Sin’s grip grows and grows. It is a merciless tyrant over our lives.
This is what makes the grace of Jesus so beautiful. Even though we have failed time after time after time. He comes with His love and favor. He has provided a way for the reign of sin to be broken over our lives — The Cross. Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection provides the way for grace to reign — have power and influence over us. Jesus forgives us our sins and gives us His righteousness. What we have done in the past no longer has power over us. When we accept Jesus as our Savior, we receive the Holy Spirit living in us. He empowers us to live our lives where the rule of Grace grows and grows.
This is why it is so important that we spend time coming to know God better through His Word. The more we know Him, the more we will understand His love, and in turn we will love Him. The more we love Him, the more we will obey Him. The more we obey Him, the more we will experience His blessings. Simply put, the closer we are to Jesus, the more we will experience His freedom!
You and I weren’t meant to be living our lives subjected to the reign of sin! We were meant for the reign of grace and the true life we will experience through Jesus our Lord!
“For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!” Romans 5:17 NIV
(Today we read Romans 5.)
The Garden of Eden was a happy place! Imagine being able to walk face to face with God — who is complete peace, complete joy, complete love, complete goodness, etc. There wasn’t any pain, sadness, or sorrow. Happiness, all the agreeable sensations from enjoying all of God’s goodness was all Adam and Eve experienced 24/7. But then they CHOSE to sin.
Death entered the picture. They were separated from that beautifully happy i.e. blessed relationship with God. From that moment on “death reigned.” The divine life they had experienced was just a memory. It remained that way until Jesus came.
Jesus is God’s “provision of grace.” (Or divine favor) His righteousness becomes ours when we place our trust in Him and receive Him as our Savior. Jesus came to restore what was lost in the Garden of Eden, and He has come to us to restore what was lost in our lives!
Sin only brings death to us! It separates us from what we were created for, living in relationship with God — being fully alive. We can possess the Happiness of Heaven through the new life that Jesus gives to us. This is what it is to “reign in life” through Jesus.
The more we experience God in close and intimate relationship, the more we will experience Him in our lives. His complete peace, His complete joy, His complete love, His complete goodness, etc. will be what we experience over and over again. Because God is who He says He is, and He wants us to KNOW Him. This knowing is to experience Him day in and day out.
Jesus told us when He walked on earth that we would experience troubles as we live on earth. The effects of sin are still with us… But we could take courage, because He has overcome the world! (John 16:33)
To reign is to “live victoriously” (Webster 1828 Dictionary). We can “reign in life (live victoriously), through the one man, Jesus Christ. He has given us all we need to live victoriously. His Holy Spirit living in us, empowers us and produces in us the fruit of a victorious life — peace, love, joy, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. (Galatians 5:22)
The secret to this life of victory is close relationship to God. Just like Adam and Eve experienced before they sinned, we are to walk and talk with God. Jesus provided the way for our relationship to be restored. Once again we can experience the “happiness of the garden”, but now that happiness goes with us wherever we go because the Holy Spirit is living inside of us!
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8 NIV
Today is Romans 5.
I am always amazed at the love of God. It is beyond my human comprehension. I have done absolutely nothing to deserve His love, but He pours it out on me in abundance.
Romans 5:8 is one of my favorite verses in Romans. It tells us that when we were against God, deeply trapped within our sins, Jesus died for us. This is God’s greatest demonstration of His love.
I know in my own life that I was in a mess made by my own choices. I was unable to free myself from sins grip. BUT JESUS!
Within my own abilities, I would probably find it hard to die for a good person, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t entertain the thoughts of dying for someone who was evil. Especially if that person had chosen to live as an enemy of me. Yet, Jesus did just that!
I have heard it said that our choices to sin, in reality, is “cosmic treason against God.” Our choice to sin is a deliberate choice against Him. Yet even though we have lived our lives chasing after sinful ways, Jesus provided the way for us to be free!
Jesus demonstrated God’s love for His rebellious children — sinners… He died for us!
“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” Romans 5:10 NIV
Reconciled- “Brought into friendship from a state of disagreement or enmity” (Webster’s 1828)
Today is Romans 5!
We were created for connection to God! Relationship is connection. Back in the Garden of Eden, God’s intent for mankind was to have relationship. When Adam and Eve chose to sin, separation from God came. This separation is all we have really known and understood in our lives. It is the norm. But God desires for us to experience something radically different than that. He wants us to be united to Him in a close and intimate relationship!
This is why Jesus came. His death, burial and resurrection provides the way for us to experience His salvation from sin. When we accept Him as our Savior, we are justified by His blood. His blood cleanses us from the sin that has separated us from God. Then we experience the most beautiful thing — reconciliation. We are brought back into the relationship that God originally desired for us to have way back at the beginning, in the Garden of Eden.
This relationship we now have with God is closely connected to Him. He gives us the Holy Spirit to live inside of us. We now live our lives literally walking and talking with God.
We go from being enemies of God, pursuing sin, to a friend of God, pursuing Him and His righteousness! We can now live our lives reconciled to God!
“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Romans 5:2 ESV
Today we start Romans 5!
Hope is the confident expectation of good.
Glory is the sum of all God’s characteristics. It is all of His perfections or excellence.
When we come to know God for who He is and all of His greatness, we know that we will experience good from Him. No matter what our circumstances are we know God is at work for our good. This is because He is completely good and He is completely love. All this love and goodness is poured out upon us.
When life is hard, we have reason to rejoice! Because whatever hardship that God has allowed into our lives is working in us perseverance, character, and hope. More than all of this, we will experience God’s love, which is defined as His will to good for us!
When we trust God in impossible circumstances, we will find out that He is faithful! He never leaves us or abandons us. Each and every circumstance will deepen our understanding of God and grow our relationship with Him, if we will determine that our eyes will be fixed on Him.
We will “rejoice in hope!” We have hope that He is working here and now on our behalf. Romans 8:28 says He is working all things for our good.
We also have hope that when all is said and done, we will experience the ultimate good, eternity with Him!
“Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.” Romans 4:20-21 NIV
There’s a saying, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” Abraham modeled that kind of faith to us.
When God spoke His great promise of blessing through Abraham’s offspring, there was a problem… Abraham and his wife could not have children. A miracle was needed!
Abraham did not know how God would do what He promise, but “Against all hope” he believed. What looked like a situation where no good could come, Abraham put his confidence in God and what God said. He knew how things looked on the outside, but he was “fully persuaded” that God could do anything.
Sin has put you and I in a hopeless situation. In ourselves, there is no solution for the brokenness in our own lives. BUT JESUS! When we place our faith in Him, what was dead inside of us comes to life, and hope comes into hopelessness. We receive God’s righteousness — right standing with God. We are “fully persuaded” just like Abraham, that God can do anything in our lives!
Salvation is just the beginning of all the good that God wants to do in us as we have faith in Him! We can trust in God and fully rely on what He has promised us in His Word!
Your Love 