Obedient From The Heart

What then? Should we 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, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set fee from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking I human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.

When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:15-23

It was nearly twenty years after Jesus had been crucified and yet as Paul wrote to the Roman believers, they still did not understand. Some did not comprehend what it meant to be free of sin’s bondage. They thought they could go on sinning because they were under grace. Just remember that whatever we submit to becomes our master. To commit sin puts us in bondage to sin. The other option is to be a slave of righteousness. Salvation actually means a change of bondage. As we once served sin, we are now committed to lives of righteousness because of the freedom Jesus provides.

Brothers and sisters, let us become in practice what we already are in status – free!

True freedom is found in bondage to Christ.

Our Daily Bread – June 19, 2008