August 11, 2021
Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.
Reading along with us in Romans? Here’s today’s reading:
Romans 6 (NIV)
Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ
1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?.........Continue Reading
We have been crucified with Christ and we cast away our old way of thinking and behaving and walk away a new person!
We give such passion to the things of this world that lead no where but death and destruction. We need to put that passion into living a life of righteousness for God. I love the reminder here that EVERY part of us should glorify God….even the mundane and seemingly unimportant parts of our life belong to God meaning everything we do should be to His glory and with His counsel.
Romans 5-6
“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Romans 6:11 NIV
https://romans.bible/romans-6-11
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 6:23 NIV
https://romans.bible/romans-6-23
Praise be to You, Lord Jesus Christ!
And if chapter 5 speaks about the work of Jesus that establishes us in salvation and justification, Romans 6 talks about how He establishes us in sanctification. His death on the cross not only struck a blow to the penalty of sin, but also to the power of sin. It’s ability to satisfy us and control us has radically changed but we must reckon it to be so. We must choose to believe and practice that sin has no influence over us. That is what God desires for us to do and so He made a way for that to happen. He stacked the deck for us, radically changing our relationship to sin so we no longer need to live in it. But as with so many other things, God does a tremendous work but then ask us to participate through faith and free will…making right choices. May we do so more and more and find the freedom and benefit that comes from sinning less and less……
Paul explains our death. Our death with Christ and our death to sin. This is what we believe and how we live a new life. Paul knows that we won’t “get it”.
“But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.”
There are so many verses about the death of our flesh, the spiritual reality, but do we believe it?
Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Galatians 5:24 And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Ephesians 2: And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the [a]course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Colossians 2: “In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body [h]of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12 buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.”