In chapter 3, we discovered how sinful we truly are. In chapter 4, we found that faith alone in Jesus can save us. In chapter 5, we found out that we are secure in Jesus and that we cannot lose the salvation that was gifted to us by God in Jesus. In Romans 6-7, we will deal with the issue of sin in the life of the believer.
I heard a famous preacher who recently went home to the Lord say that a saved person will sin less, but feel more sinful as he matures. What an awesome observation!
Paul was a Pharisee, and he would have thought himself blameless before God, but once he was saved and grew in Jesus, he called himself the ‘chief of sinners.’ God, when He ‘wrote’ the scriptures, did not shy away from the sinfulness of his servants. Abraham was an adulterer, David was that and a murderer, Solomon never met a woman he did not want to marry or at least bed, and Peter denied Jesus and led a faction of the disciples to walk away from fishing for men and go back to fishing; others committed other sins, and yet they were saved by God and secure in Him.
As we get into Romans 6, we need to contextualize it with Romans 5:20, ‘where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.’ The conclusion we can come to, from the outside and without having the mind of God, is that grace is dangerous to one who is gracious. God’s grace can be abused and often is by all of us, me included, and I am sure you do too.
In verses 5-14, we are called to make choices; choose to surrender our bodies (members) to righteousness rather than sin. We need to be reminded daily that we are dead to sin. And truthfully, most of us do leave some sins behind. Many who drank a lot no longer get drunk, many who took drugs are off drugs, and sexually immoral people often become faithful marriage partners. But what about the hidden things?
The thought of hatred, hidden bitterness at a parent, a friend, a former spouse, a teacher, or maybe even yourself? I can go on, but you get the point. Most of us have sins that we are not ready to surrender as yet. We maybe have slowed the frequency with which we indulge, but we still do at times. We allow these things to have control for a season, no matter how small. God, through Paul, is asking us to learn to sin less, to surrender our bodies less and less as we get closer and closer to meeting Jesus.
As children of God, we should be careful not to take advantage of God’s grace. Paul asks, “Should we sin that grace may abound?’ The resounding answer is ‘Certainly not!!’ But we do; I do. We take advantage of God’s grace more often than we want to admit to ourselves and others. In Jesus, we have the power to choose; we can choose to obey Jesus more and more – to have that ‘check’ by the Holy Spirit that makes us think about what we are going to do before we do it. And, as we listen to Him more and more, we will sin less.
God wants us to become slaves to righteousness and not slaves to sin. One of the ways to combat sin is to seek the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives (Galatians 5:22-23). We all know these. We can choose to love rather than hate, to live in joy rather than despair, to seek peace and not discord, to be longsuffering and not short tempered with every one that crosses us, to be kind, to seek goodness and look for the goodness in life, to be faithful and learn to be trusted by God and man, to be gentle (we need to learn this a lot with our wives and daughters), and to have self-control; we call it delayed gratification in our modern language. When we make the choice to choose righteousness, we are less likely to choose sin.
BUT…we are still sinners, we will sin all the way to the day we meet Jesus; and for that, we have the security of 1 John 1:8-9, “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive our sin.” So, today, let us begin the journey to sin less. God bless you!!
Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario
The post Romans 6:1-23 – Lord Help Me Sin Less :: By Sean Gooding appeared first on Rapture Ready.
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