Saying Goodbye

Death. Seems like such a horrible business. Pretty final. No turning back. Once your body dies, your body is gone. Sadness. Goodbye.

But this morning I was reading about death…. to sin. In Romans 6, it says we died to sin. Which means we hate it and don’t want it to be a part of our life any longer. We want it done. A clean break. We want it dead. But just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. The life of deadness was put behind Him.

It goes on to talk about being in bondage to sin and I thought about that a little bit. I thought about what I learned in school about slavery and bondage and no freedom to make choices for yourself. Someone else made choices for you and you were helpless to do anything else but what you were told. It was the way of life for the slave – to accept that which was the only option.

Freedom on the other hand, offers you the same options and more. Freedom means you can make good or bad choices. And by choices, I am also talking about desires. Because Christ died to sin (and so, we too, died to sin), sin becomes something we sense is wrong. Once we accept Christ into our lives, sin leaves a foul taste in our mouths, and there is no turning back from that now. When we become dead to our sin, it is dead. No turning back to thinking a sin is acceptable. Forever changed. Forever gone is any joy in sin. It will from that day forward bother us deep inside. Just as Christ died and was raised from the dead, He can not die again. It is finished. And so it is with us as well. Sin will forevermore bother us.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires… offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death – to life!... for sin shall not be your master. (Romans 6:11-14)

That really hit me. Brought from the jaws of death  - to life! The option to choose living for Jesus is mine! Living with Him every day, is a choice now made available to me. Fullness and richness in life with Jesus is a choice. Let us be dead to sin and choose Christ Who reigns forevermore!