Rom
8:8-11 (NIV) Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.
9 You,
however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the
Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ,
he does not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead
because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 And if
the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who
raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through
his Spirit, who lives in you.
NOTE: We are not
controlled by the sinful nature nor are we slaves to sins. We are legally (spiritually) freed from the
hold over us. We have a new owner. And while is was not possible to please God,
not matter what we did, now it is possible, because the stain of sin has been
removed, and our minds have been renewed.
In olden days, when slavery was practiced, a person was a slave with
little ability to change his status. For
some, slavery was forced, and for some it was entered voluntarily. This picture is one of forced slavery. In slavery, one is not completely controlled,
and maybe that is the picture here. We
want to get out but we can't, because sin has a stranglehold on us. Jesus death, and our faith, breaks sin's
claim upon us. We are free to serve
God. In a sense, this a legal picture. Except for the Spirit living within us, and
beginning to renew our mind, many things remain the same. I still live in a sinful body, just as before
when I was a slave to sin. I still have
the same choices. I still choose
wrongly, and at times I choose correctly, which I also did when I was a slave
to sin. But the good news is that
legally I am no longer owned by sin or a slave to sin. Jesus gives me life, and I'm being changed to
become more like my savior.
No comments:
Post a Comment