Good morning and happy Monday! I had a huge weekend with lots of travel which will at times be the norm for the new job. I drove up to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville for an all day seminar covering 4 learning elements that set the foundation of what it means to be a servant leader of integrity. I love this program and its curriculum, helping international university students to better grasp these ideals that will serve them for life by helping them to better serve others. We were one speaker short, so a week ago I was asked to step in and present one of the 90 minute elements. Now I have never spoken in my life so this at first alarmed me. But after much prayer and quiet time, God spoke and said, are you passionate about the material and the purpose? Absolutely. Then study the material and simply tell others. The presentation went awesome and we all had a fun time talking about what it means to be an effective communicator. What a great topic that we all need so much today in a world where you can’t even get someone to put down their phone for 30 seconds and look at you as you talk!
The drive up was awful. Fayetteville is a good 5 ½ to 6 hours Northeast and as I drove up on Friday it rained on me ALL the way…HARD. There’s not much that will frazzle your nerves quicker than driving on the interstate in the driving rain. It took me almost 7 hours and boy, was I ready to get out of that car! The trip back yesterday was much better, only occasional light rain and very minimal traffic until I hit Dallas. Good ol’ DFW traffic, gotta love it.
Well, because of the crazy weekend schedule I missed a few days of my 5MC writing. I didn’t miss my daily reading time though, I just didn’t have time to write like I normally do. For me, and hopefully you as well, the major importance is just don’t miss the opportunity to be in God’s Word daily. I need God’s wisdom every day, not just occasionally. I can also speak from personal experience, its crazy how skipping one day in God’s Word turns into a week and then a month. There are a lot of powers in this world that do not want you in God’s Word at all much less daily and we have to fight to make it happen. I hope your fight is one of victory to spend 5 minutes in God’s Word daily.
This morning we’re in Romans chapter 6. Paul opens with a question. So if all of our sin is covered by Jesus can we just keep living in sin? Paul’s response, “By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? (Romans 6:2) So what do we as sinners do with sin in this world?
To better answer that, let’ summarize Romans thus far. So far, we’ve seen that mankind has inherited a sin nature and every man and women that has ever been born has this nature. No one is good before God, no not one. (Romans 3:10 para) This nature results in us being in rebellion towards God, we're always moving away from God. But because of the sacrifice of Jesus we have been redeemed to God. AMEN! As this redemption takes place we are new creatures, rectified to God adn gifted with the Holy Spirit. Along with this new nature comes new desires to serve him and be righteous before him. “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4) That means learning a new way of life, leaving behind that old sin nature that we are so used to living with. So here comes chapter 6 to tell us more about just that.
So you see there is a big difference between just being saved from you sin and living a righteous life before God. We have all seen examples of this, someone that claims to be a Christian but lives a life so riddled with sin that it makes you cringe. Paul tells us here in chapter 6 that if you’re truly a follower of Christ and you are a new creature in Him, you will WANT to live differently. Folks, this is a guarantee. If you are a truly born again Christ follower you cannot and will not be able to go on living that same sin filled life you did before accepting Christ. When you are changed by Jesus, it will show to all the world. When the Holy Spirit comes to live within you, you WILL be changed!
So, to better understand this, let’s look at 2 big church words, justification and sanctification. Justification takes place the moment you accept Christ as your savior. At that moment you were declared righteous and the guilt of your sin was removed. You were justified to God through Christ. Now that you are saved by Christ, God will begin a work in you that HE will continue throughout your life. He has sanctified you (set you aside) for His use. My friends, that is the reason we are here on this Earth, not to serve ourselves but to serve God. We were created by Him to serve Him. Oh, how our world has gotten this backwards. Get a good job, make a lot of money, buy fancy cars, buy a huge house, and then fill the house with all types of gadgets and stuff. We are oh so good at serving ourselves. But we were made for more, oh so much more. We were made to serve God. We were justified by God through Jesus and then sanctified for His use.
I’ve heard it said that God is both an interior and exterior decorator. He is an exterior decorator in that He enables us to stand before Him because of the work that Jesus did on the Cross. But as we accept His son he also decorates our interior as He changes our hearts and lives by the power of the Holy Spirit to make us the kind of people we should be. Praise God that he loves us enough to not just leave us the way that we are, steeped in a meaningless, hopeless, joyless life of sin. He saves us from our sin, promises us eternal life with Him in heaven and also a life to the full here on Earth serving Him. God is so good to us.
Paul concludes chapter 6 with a powerful verse that always speaks greatly to me. “for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) What a powerful statement, let’s unpack it.
For the wages of sin is death. What exactly does that mean? Most of us probably have a job of some sort. We do something for somebody and in return they give us money. They give us a wage for what we do. That’s exactly what this says. If you live in sin, do whatever you want, whenever you want with whomever you want and don’t care about the ramifications, you will get paid your wages for it. My friends, the devil is real and he is in control of this world. In John 12:31 he is called the “ruler of this world” and in 2 Cor. 4:4 he is called ‘god of this age’. Satan is here, and his goal is to keep you from serving God and living a righteous life for God. Satan is the paymaster and if you love sin, he will make sure you get paid your due wages. The wages he will pay you? Death. God’s Word defines ‘death’ here as separation from God. Satan’s goal is to separate you from God and the way he does that is sin.
But look at the second part of that verse. “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Praise be to God for His gift of Jesus. If we accept the gift of Jesus and choose to follow Him and serve Him and turn from a life that indulges in sin we can have the opposite of death, eternal life. Eternal life WITH God instead of separated from God. God’s Word is very clear that EVERY person that has EVER lived will experience eternal life. Our souls will live on. As this verse implies there is only two destinations of our souls, eternity in the presence of God OR eternity separated from God. This can also be defined as heaven and hell. Heaven is eternal life with God and hell is eternal life separated from God. It all depends on what you do with Jesus. Every single life on this planet hinges on what they do with Jesus Christ. What a decision we all have.
We are saved by faith in Jesus Christ and we live by faith in Jesus Christ. We are to live each and every moment of every day by faith. You cannot live a good life by yourself, you cannot battle sin by yourself. It requires constant dependence on God, looking to the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit for His daily guidance.
I pray every day that your 5 minutes spent in God’s Word, speaks to you in such volume that you feel an unexplained draw to continue reading on in every day that His air fills your lungs. Praise be to God for the power and truth of His Holy Words.
Blessing for you day, share the promises of God’s Word with someone today!
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