Romans Chapter 6 cont'd
Now you've got to get this! Knowing this truth is a key to your liberation. What happened to Jesus has happened for you and to you. You are dead to sin's loveless lordship and fully alive to God's loving fatherhood because of what the Lord Jesus did for us. Even during this earthly life, you can now say "no" to the enticements and impulses of your lower passions- so just do it! You are not to submit to the selfish demands and compulsive cravings of your physical drives. Courageously resisting sin is another key to your victory. No longer turn over your human powers to become weapons of unrighteousness and thereby continue in sin. Rather, consciously and deliberately surrender your powers of both mind and body to God and he will possess and use them as weapons in his powerful hands for his noble purposes. After all, you are alive for his pleasure. Now knowing the truth and resisting evil are vital measures, but incomplete. Passionately pursuing God is the third key to living above the dictatorial power of sin. Remember, sin is no longer your master because you have passed through the night season of religious externals into the brilliant day of grace- may your eyes adjust to the light!
Comments:
On the firm foundation of knowing in our deep heart that we have been translated out of the environment of our old "sin and death" life into a new atmosphere that is infused with the fresh air of heaven itself (breath and spirit are the same word in both Hebrew and Greek)...and that we are truly and already integrated into the New Creation that Christ has inaugurated...we are able to face and deal with the ongoing realities of "the world, the flesh and the devil" from an entirely new vantage point. So much of the daily battle to "overcome" turns on the hinge of maintaining the awareness...the alert consciousness...that we have been graciously born anew on this higher ground. The higher hill is our hill...we have a new and righteous heart, 2/3's of the angels didn't fall...the Trinity is fighting with us and for us...and our victorious destiny is secure in Christ. Besides...we are built for the battle and the fight is the noblest one ever fought.
Today...and each hour of this day...we can rise up and calmly say "no" to sin, live in an opposite spirit from the world around us that is fueled by "the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the boastful pride of life" (imagining ourselves to be independent from God and his grace), firmly tell satan to "get behind" us when he confronts us and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, live in an interactive friendship with our Papa that is characterized by a running dialogue in the course of both our activities and leisure. Then...we can sleep enfolded in the Father's mighty arms and rise to do the same tomorrow.
May the Lord help us to look away...and make a clean break...from any past failed strategies to overcome and re-engage our lives from a Christ-centered angle that is grounded in the ancient wisdom of his first apostles. He formed them into authentic geniuses of human life under God.
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