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 Mark |
Reflect: Reflect upon God's majesty - write as many scripture references that you can think of that refer to how all creation bows to his name.
Read: Romans 6:1-14 -link-
Response:
The great theme here, particularly in verses 1–11, is that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are not only historical facts and significant doctrines but personal experiences of the Christian believer. This experience shouldn’t involve disobeying God when we like on the basis that this provides opportunity for experiencing his grace - as this is a potential heresy known as ‘antinomianism’ or the idea that members of a particular religious group are under no obligation to obey the laws of ethics or morality.
Read Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians for insight into how the early Christians were seduced by this approach – and consider how contemporary culture influences our thinking about wrongdoing and God’s grace-full provision of forgiveness.
Paul bluntly tells the Roman church that sin is inadmissible because of our union with Christ. The Christian life begins with a death to sin – literally ‘we died to sin’ (past tense) so how can we live in it (future tense)? It is not the literal impossibility but the moral incongruity that Paul is stressing.
We live under a regime of grace, which liberates us from sin instead of encouraging it, enabling us to overcome temptation. This involves a mindset of living as having already received resurrection life.
It doesn’t mean we are corpse-like. Disobedience to God will still have its attraction. Because we have died to sin, in the sense that Christ has taken its penalty and we’ve been given a new life, our cooperation with the Holy Spirit living in us in pursuing God’s ways means we can actively choose to live rightly (vs 11–13).
Remember we are made up of three parts – the Spirit (The eternal being), the soul (Mind, will & emotions), the body (the physical). The Spirit will speak, the mind then makes choices based upon how it sees, and then the will and emotions fall into line, and then the body reacts. Now if God is speaking faith hope life, and the mind sees something else - it corrupts your ability to be able to step into the plan of God. For example if I said the word Horse - what did you see? A horse. We think in pictures. If you see a bad result in your minds eye, then all the prayer and action you can muster will not change a simple fact – you have decided to not allow God to flow through you.
So, a key part of living for God is in the mind. It is in knowing (v 6) that our old self was crucified with Christ. It is in knowing (v 3) that baptism into Christ is baptism into his death and resurrection. It is in reckoning, intellectually recognising (v 11), that in Christ we have died to sin and we live to God.
We need so to grasp this truth, its fact and significance, that a return to the old life is unthinkable.
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