Yesterday was a difficult day in our preacher boy club. I confronted each of the kids on their friends. I asked each who their best friend was, and if their friend was saved, and if the answer was “yes” I asked “how do you know?” and I challenged each and every one of their answers by comparing it to Christ. If the answer was “no” I asked “why?” and if the answer was anything but “I told them and they weren’t interested” I asked why they were not sharing the Gospel, and if they loved their friends, or their friends’ opinions of them more. And why? Because the nature of the Gospel is confrontational. It has been from the beginning. God’s message has always been the same: Repent and Return to me.
Christians, we, too, need to stay on message. Life is short, and we don’t have time to play around or mince words. God is the enemy of sin, sin destroys us and keeps us from the Father, and Christ is the only one who can deal with it. Coming to Christ doesn’t make us sinless, but it makes us hate our sin. He, by the Holy Spirit and His word convicts us, and makes us want to stop. And, while that is a process, it never once condones sin, nor ignores it. We, if we’re abiding in Christ, cannot abide with Sin. It must be confronted. We must, by the power of Jesus Christ, seek to eradicate it from our lives, and when we DO sin, we must confess and turn away from it and back to Christ. We do not have the power in and of ourselves to do this. A fter all, before Jesus, we were dead in sin. But if we’re to have true life in Christ, our enemies must be Christ’s enemies, and we must seek to do away with Sin and Death, and we do that through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Romans 6
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Slaves to Righteousness
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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