Saturday 7 Feb 2009

Saturday Reading: Romans 6:1-7
 
Key Verse: Romans 6:6
6  knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be destroyed, that from now on we should not serve sin.

Devotion:
Just because we know that Christ is willing and just to forgive us of all of our sins that we bring before Him, does not mean that we can go out and sin a bit more so that we can show just how much He does love us – that would be counter intuitive. We need to separate ourselves from sin and we do that by following on in Christ’s example. No, we don’t all have to go and be nailed to the cross so that we can die, nor should be take our lives and make sure that we do die. What we do need to do is to give up one life so another may reign.

We started out living in a life of sin. That life was the only one that we knew about until someone was kind enough to tell us about God. When we then found out more about God we wanted to bring Him into our lives and we did that by admitting that we were sinners and asking Him to forgive us for those sins. At that moment we can say that we let go of our life of sin, or we died from that life of sin. Just like there are marvels of science and medicine that can now bring people back from the point of death, we may not fully let go of that life of sin but rather cling to it because we don’t know any other life. But we will never move on until we do let go of that life.

Baptism is our way of showing that we are letting go of the life of sin and are being buried under Christ’s cleansing blood. When we come back up again we are being born into a new life where we are not bound by sin. The physical act of baptism does not do this, Christ does that by forgiving us. The baptism is just our way of showing that we are willing to let go of our sin life and take on our new life in Christ. It is God who gets the glory and we are the ones showing everyone else that we are willing to take on our new life in Christ with all to see... It is by God’s grace that we are saved from our death penalty and it is through His mercy that we can continue to live, but let go of that old life of sin we must...

Points to Ponder:
Do you find it hard letting go?
 
Are you depending on God to help you let go?