April 12 through April 18, 2010

Monday: We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin—Romans 5:6. Several years ago I counseled a man with a bad temper who was otherwise a good Christian. His temper often led him to what we might call “spontaneous sins”—which he said he knew God understood because “I’m only human”. After he came to understand that his anger was the result of deep seated subconscious foundations that had shaped (enslaved) his personality for years he realized that he used anger as a means of feeling in control. Using this verse, I was able to help him see that in reality it was his decision to allow the old sin of anger to flare up. Once he surrendered his deep seated foundation of anger to God’s Holy Spirit and began exercising self-control he became a changed man. Later, he confessed that he had enjoyed using anger to control situations and people, had simply excused his continued sin with the rationalization that “I’m only human.”

Tuesday: Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions—Romans 6:12. When I was growing up this verse was one of the chief passages that served as the hinge upon which the gate to Sanctification swung open to us. These days, we don’t hear much about Sanctification. In her sermon entitled “Saved From What?” my daughter, Rev. Leah Hidde-Gregory summed up what this verse teaches us: “We are justified through Christ, and then we learn we don’t have to live with those sins through sanctification…In today’s society, we are too often told to settle for less than the ideal. We are told that striving for perfection (complete sanctification) will burn us out and that we need to accept our humanness, trust God to keep us out of hell and just try to master a few of our shortcomings. But when we are doing the work of God, when we are living under the salvation of God, when we truly believe that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, and when we know in our hearts that if God be for us, who can be against us. Then we cannot accept our humanness. We must be the divinely filled vessels God put us on this earth to be.”

Wednesday: No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God…as instruments of righteousness—Romans 6:13. The KJV uses the word Yield instead of present. As we use the word, yield means to give the right of way, but the Greek word (paristēmi) means to bring before, to present, to provide, to assist. Again, Paul uses the imperative “no longer”—referring to an action on our part—bring ourselves as offerings to be used for unchristian attitudes and actions, rather make the effort to always bring ourselves as offerings to be used by God as instruments for doing what is right. This means we must live constantly aware of the fact that everything we do, every decision we make, every reaction we have to situations leads us to doing what is right or what is wrong. Why would Paul use an emphatic imperative if we are unable to avoid “sinning everyday”?

Thursday: For sin shall have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means—Romans 6:14, 15. Remember our friend you met earlier with the anger problem? His initial reaction to our counseling sessions had been to declare, “I’m under grace and not law.” Apparently Paul ran into this same line of rationalization because he addresses it in the passage we are reflecting on today. His response to that argument is quit clear. The New American Standard translates Paul’s response to such an idea as “May it never be!” Grace is God’s undeserved love toward a sinful race that has been demonstrated in Christ Jesus to draw us back to our Heavenly Father. In this case, the object of both grace and law had the same purpose—to draw us back to God. Being “under grace” doesn’t refer to alleviating the obligation Paul spoke of in verses 12 and 13, rather it means that God’s approach to drawing a sinful race back home is now centered in his work of love demonstrated through Jesus and not in the words of antiquity.

Friday: When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness…but now that you have been freed from sin…the advantage you get is sanctification. —Romans 6:20,22. When my grandson, Will, starts kindergarten in a couple of years he will be free from knowing how to work fractions because he is a slave to his age in terms of knowledge. However, once “the grace” of education appears to him he will be freed from the slavery of his age and eventually become obligated to learn fractions. Paul is saying the same thing in this verse. Before the grace of God appeared to us (and we embraced it) we weren’t accountable for living right—had we been we would have been able to obtain our standing with God through our own works—and grace would have been unnecessary. He then reminds us by grace we have been freed from sin and that the “advantage” is “sanctification” (another term for holiness), whereby we are able to choose to overcome our sinful tendencies and by cooperating with the Holy Spirit “possess our selves in sanctification and honor” I Thessalonians 4:4).

Saturday: The end is eternal life—Romans 6:22c. Paul tells us that the final result (the meaning of the word “end” in the Greek text) of our following the path of sanctification (choosing to overcome sin and seeking to “love God with all our heart, mind and strength and our neighbor as ourselves”) is eternal life. One of the things that I had drilled into me as a child and later in my theological studies was that the word “eternal” refers not to a place or specific point in time, but to that which transcends time and space. I can go to the bank and purchase a $10,000 certificate of deposit that will yield a certain amount of interest when it matures. In other words, I can say that I have the $10,000 plus whatever the interest at maturity is as long as I meet the conditions of the bank (not to cash it in before the maturity date). It can be said that we have eternal life now, but to realize the promise of eternal life (glorification in the world to come), I must “grow in grace and knowledge” and “no longer present myself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but present myself to God…as an instrument of righteousness”

Sunday: So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus—Romans 6:11. The key to victorious living over sin and self is to stop thinking that the old way of life and its sins have any power over us. Stop thinking of ourselves as weak and lacking courage in the face of temptations and difficulties. Paul tells us to “consider” (meaning to think in this way) those days of weakness and having to sin as being dead and behind us. We are to think of ourselves as victors, not victims; as winners in the spiritual battle to possess our souls, not as weak, whiny wimps; as coworkers with God in our quest for sanctification, not as having to coexist with our “little” sins. To consider means to believe. When we believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, the door opens to eternal life. But in order to fully know God’s peace, power and purpose in your life we must allow our belief to include the fact that we are dead to sin, that it has absolutely no power over us and that we can choose to follow the path of sanctification all through this life until our glorification in the world to come.