No Longer Slaves to Sin
by John Sheeley
The gospel message begins with the sad news that while God created all things to be perfect, man chose to disobey God bringing sin and death into the world. However, the good news of the gospel is that God came in the flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ, living a perfect life and taking all the justifiable wrath of God against sin on himself to pay the penalty for our sin. He rose on the third day and one day will come back for those who have trusted in him.
As servants of Jesus, we realize that we cannot be blameless on our own because of this sinful nature we’ve inherited from the first man, Adam. But, if we put our trust in what Jesus Christ did, we can be upright before God based on his righteousness. We benefit from God’s grace through our faith, not our works.
Unfortunately, that knowledge can lead to one of the greatest threats to being a follower of Jesus. We lose the ability to serve him properly when we allow immorality, corruption, and disobedience to take root in our lives, becoming so comfortable with it that we begin to not even notice it anymore. One of the greatest Christian teachers ever was Paul and he warned us about this in one of his early letters to Christians in Rome. He writes,
“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?” (Romans 6:1–2)
A more recent theologian put it this way, “We are both accounted righteous and transformed into people who do what is right in God’s sight (Rom 6:12–19; 1 Cor 7:19; Gal 5:16–24), as God joins us with his Son and fills us with his Spirit.”
As Christians, we are not to get comfortable with sin merely because we have been given the righteousness of Christ. When we view our faith in such a way, it shows we have a very narrow view of what it means to be justified before God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Our reconciliation is more than just having the debt paid, but the relationship is also restored!
We shouldn’t lose sight of the truth that our justification (acceptance by God as no longer guilty) through Christ is always attached to sanctification (the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit to help make us more like Jesus). Our justification is done once and for all while the work of sanctification is gradual and progressive. God’s desire for us is to live lives that are evidence of us dying to our sin and living in righteousness. To quote yet another theologian, “God is not a vast forgiving-machine. There is no such thing as justification all by itself … justification when it is real always is wedded to sanctification.”
More Than A Get Out Of Hell Free Card
Maybe part of the problem is that in so many of our churches, the gospel presented was limited to saying a prayer for salvation and hoping it was enough to take care of any afterlife issues. Too few in our churches understood the gospel is much more than a prayer or piece of paper signed to join a church. It is the power of God for salvation, not mere dogma related to avoiding the fires of hell. The gospel is for our past, our present, and our future. The beauty of the gospel is that it’s sufficient to save us from the penalty AND the power of sin every day of our lives.
There is no denying that we are in a spiritual battle every day of our lives. It’s a battle against a foe we cannot touch or see in the physical world, but we can certainly see its effects, and touch its painful results. That’s why what Paul writes later in chapter 6 of his letter to the Romans matters so much to us. He reminds us in the body of Christ that we do not have to be held captive to our sin, we do not have to be comfortable in that sin. “If we died with Christ, we believe we will also live with him…so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (v.8, 11)
Through Paul's words, the Spirit challenges us as Christ’s servants to not let sin control our bodies, nor do we obey sin’s passions just because we are under the grace of God. Saints, we are to flee from the temptations of this world and of our flesh, not putting ourselves up for sale to the enemy who wishes to control us and harm us. We serve an awesome God who desires better for us.
Dead to Sin, Alive to God
That better comes when, as followers of Christ, we identify with him in his death. No one likes to think about death, but as Christians, we believe we have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer us who lives, but Christ in us. A much better way! Something is going to own us but it doesn’t have to be sin anymore. Sin isn’t our owner because the blood of Jesus was spilled at the cross to purchase our souls for eternity.
There is a sweet blessing when we understand that being dead to sin means we are alive to God. It doesn’t matter if you can feel it every day, you won’t, nobody can. Our feelings are probably the shallowest part of our nature. It’s not a guess, it’s not imagined, it is true in Christ. Therefore, act upon that faith, act on what you know is true.
Once we’ve come to terms with identifying with Christ and being settled on the truth of living to God, then we strive, with God’s power, to remove sin from our lives. We must resolve to not give our ears, our eyes, our hearts, hands, or feet to the devil for his use and endeavors. Some things will be easy to remove from your life because they fall into the obvious categories of danger. However, Jesus reminds us that even a little yeast will impact all the dough it touches, even the little sins we discount can have a great impact on our lives. Do not become comfortable with any sin, no matter its size or apparent danger.
Rest in that good news of the gospel and let the Spirit of the living God direct all your ways so that you may serve him with gladness and joy completely.