We Are Who We Obey (Romans 6:15-23). – December 7, 2014
We have heard from our childhood that we are what we eat. It’s pretty easy to see who is eating the right stuff and who isn’t. Romans chapter 6 tells us we are who we serve. If we serve sin then we are the servants of sin, and if we serve righteousness then we are the servants of God. The chapter is about what choice Christians will make about who they will serve. Will we go back to serving sin with our Christian life, even though we know that the things we did in that life brought shame and death, or will we serve righteousness and holiness which is what our new life is designed to do? Either way we are guaranteed to see the fruits of our service, good or bad manifest themselves in our lives.
When we were under sin and the law, before salvation, we did the thing that came naturally. That is, our nature reacted to our sinful appetites by yielding to the temptations we thought would satisfy us. Though it brought shame and ultimately death, it was what we knew and we were comfortable doing it. In Christ sin no longer has that dominion over us and we can respond to its promptings with what we have learned in Christ and have victory. We can chose to disobey the old master and serve God. We have learned that real victory in our Christian life comes through the crucifixion and resurrection. What used to stimulate us to react to evil can now be used as a signal to respond with godliness.