Romans Chapter 6 cont'd
I keep repeating myself because these concepts are so foreign to us and we so easily lose our grasp of them. Just like you used pour your energies into loving unclean things in unclean ways; now put your new energies into loving and serving what is right and pure. Before you "couldn't even relate" to what was holy. Now you look back on your shameful and fruitless old life realizing that it only leads to death.
So now, in Christ, we "can't even relate" to living in sin because we are love-slaves of God and we enjoy the fruit of living whole and holy lives, which leads to everlasting life. For death is the paycheck for sin; but God's free gift is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Comments:
We don't often hear the truth about who we really are, what has actually happened to us and what kind of amazing resources are now available to us in Christ from the daily newspaper, the nightly news, the popular culture and its mediums or from most of the people all around us in this world--even in our church communities. From where on earth can we hear this amazing news repeated? How can it be reinforced to our inner beings? It seems that Paul understood that this great news tends to be elusive and needs to be repeated to us in various ways for it to really sink in. In this chapter, he just kept laboring and laboring on behalf of his readers in his jealousy for them to internalize it and never let it go.
By the grace of God, we were mysteriously included in and identified with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus (the book of Ephesians adds his ascension as well) and this has forever changed our essential nature and our relationship to and basic posture toward this world, our old self and the spiritual powers of evil. As Peter states in his epistle, God, by his power, has provided everything that we need for both life and godliness though our having an intimate and experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ (2 Pet 1:3).
The only ways (literally speaking) that I have experienced the ongoing reinforcement of these truths in my heart and mind is by regular meditation on the NT scriptures, the whispers of the Holy Spirit to my soul and by being around friends who also believe and know these things and who make a concerted effort to encourage me over and over again. It's important to hear these things preached in public and pondered in solitude...but, for me, it has also been vital to have a circle of friends who have known me well and who have, face to face, thought deeply and pondered out loud with me about these truths and their applications. Meaningful relational connection with a few true friends is often the missing divinely designed context within which these biblical truths find the right kind of soil to be rooted, cultivated and nurtured into maturity.
If you don't have this kind of circle of friends, ask God to provide and then go and sincerely offer yourself to be this kind of friend to a few others you seemed drawn toward and see what happens. Father, I ask you to lead my friends into these relational circles of Christ's love.
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