The Gospel According to Paul: God’s Love Provides Freedom From Sin. Message Magazine’s Online Devotional for Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Listen to “Thoughts in Worship 04.25.2018” on Spreaker.
“What shall we say then? Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection. We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. (For someone who has died has been freed from sin.) Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Romans 6:1–8, NET).
You Can Lose It
Sometimes people see the blessing of salvation through Christ as permission to live any ole’ kind of way; strange, I know. This is why some people believe that once we are saved as young people (or at whatever age), we cannot do anything to lose our salvation, despite the Bible evidence to the contrary. Take for example Jonah. Some see his initial disobedience, and the fact that the mariners on the ship he boarded learned about God through Jonah’s experience, as God’s blessings upon his disobedience. In the same faulty thought process, some think Samson’s errors in judgment were orchestrated by God, to bring Himself glory.
I could go on, but suffice it to say, God is so loving and wise that He inspired Paul to get to the root of the matter I am illustrating here. Just because God has a way to work through our mess to bring about His glory does not mean that He is OK with our mess. We are not to wallow in the muck and mire of sin thinking our bad behavior gives God glory somehow.
God’s Better Way
God’s plan for us, is that we become baptized by the water and His Holy Spirit as a symbol of our death to sin. He wants us to yield ourselves to Him and allow Him to miraculously crucify our desires and willingness to break His holy Ten Commandments.
He wants to bury our tendencies to disregard His love for us. He wants to forever destroy our justification for doing that which He has already condemned. In short, God wants to recreate us into the likeness of His Son. And, this recreation is symbolized by coming up out of the water in baptism just like Jesus arose from the grave that historic Sunday morning.
Freed From Sin’s Grasp
Sin does not need to dominate you, friends. When you give all that you are, and all that you have to God, He can destroy sin’s grasp on you and make you a new creation who loves all that Jesus loves.
I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, are you?
