Living in Grace

[Side note: Just home from 8 days in the hospital. It felt so good to write again this morning.]

Rom. 6: 14

For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Do believers need to sin so that grace may abound? NO. How can we who are dead to sin still live in it? Don't we know the truths about our baptism? Just in case, Paul has developed certain facts that are true for all believers. He asks believers to consider that are true. They are:

• When Jesus was raised from the dead to the glory of the Father, so too we will walk in newness of life.
• If we have been baptized into Jesus' death, we will be united with Him in resurrection.
• Our old self was crucified with Him in order that sin might be brought to nothing.
• We are no longer enslaved to sin.
• If we have died with Christ, we are set free from sin.
• Christ will never die again since He was raised from the dead.
• Death has no dominion over Christ.
• He died once for all to this death, but now lives His life to God.

So you also consider Yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Paul has developed the fact base, a base which should affect every believer monumentally. But what is our response to all these facts? What does it mean to consider?  For me it means to make all these truths a reality in my life. I must live them out or they are worth nothing. They become an empty,vain religion. Every believer would say emphatically that our relationship with Christ is not a religion but a relationship. Yet somehow we reduce these great truths for living life to an empty set of rules. Without any power or grace, we keep on plowing through the muck of the world finding ourselves deeply mired. So the question is again, what is my response? How do I consider? Without a doubt, Paul has given us our response. 

• Let not sin reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. When sin reigns, the Spirit does not. When sin reigns, our communication is cut off from God. When sin reigns, we take ourselves from the grace and mercy to help in time of need. We do it! It is not done to us!
• Do not present yourselves as instruments for unrighteousness,We would all say we do not want this, but does our lack of action make this happen? Do we keep ourselves in the position where we enjoy a little of the world and a little of grace? 
•  but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. Sometimes quitting a sinful behavior without putting a godly one in its place results in a no-man's land where the person is easily caught by sin once again. If this happens repeatedly, the person feels hopeless. They just accept that this sin will always be there. So sad! No sin has to be there! No personality flaw has to control the life. Walk in the Spirit! Walk in newness of life! Walk in the resurrection power of Jesus. 
• For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. If our thought processes are right, and we consider resulting in action, then sin will not control us!! We are not longer under the law, that is even a self-imposed one. We must not reduce our Christianity to a set of rules without the warmth of a relationship with Christ. 

Through the Spirit this life is a possibility. Even more than that, it is a reality!

Father,

What a word this morning! My heart lifts up when I think about all that You have given us in the person of Jesus Christ. Give me Your grace and mercy to help in time of need [the need: temptation to sin]. Thank You for cancelling the debt of my sin and giving me resurrection life. Reveal to me when I have slipped and draw me quickly to Yourself.

In Jesus name,

Amen