Dead to Sin, Alive to God
1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? 3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
We’ve been saved from the wrath of God by a work of God on our lives! God is the one who had to do all the work so that He gets all the glory. If we are able to assist in this matter, we will be able to claim that God OWES us our salvation because we have done some work in the process. Instead, God has now saved us so that we may put all of the glory of our salvation into His hands alone. Now, seeing that God gets the glory for saving us from our sins, should we continue in sin now that we HAVE been saved so that God can be more glorified? By that, Paul is implying that God would receive more glory based on the amount and value of the sins that He takes on our behalf. Of course not! Once we are saved we are new creatures from that day forward. God has done the transformational work in our lives and now we are able to walk in freedom from sin. Before we were saved, we were unable to break from the bondage to our sinful proclivities but now that we have had our sinful lives nailed to the cross, we are to walk in newness of life – that being a life that is free of sin. On the day that we are saved, our sin-saturated life was killed and we rose again as a phoenix out of the ashes of our old life to life a new life for God. Is it easy? No. We still have our old habits, relationships, and lives but we have the ability now to choose to walk in a different way. Paul even had the same problems that many of us wrestle with daily and we’ll discuss that in detail in the end of Chapter 7. Many times it will take a while for you to start to walk free of sin but not only is it possible, it is a sure sign that you’re truly saved. Often, you won’t even see the changes take place, but others will see them take place in you. Family members and friends will comment to you saying that you’ve really changed and that you’re not the same person you were before. We are to strive then to live free of sin, repenting to God when we fail, and rejoicing daily in the Lord who has saved us from our sins. The path isn’t easy, and some times it feels impossible, but our destination is sure.