Living in the Spirit
June 19, 2014
Scripture Reading: Romans 6:1-11
What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. – Romans 6:1-4
Paul had quite a challenge bringing the gentiles into the Body of Christ. Coming from a markedly different culture than the Jewish one, they worshipped many different gods or none at all. Their lifestyles among other things included eating foods that were taboo for Jews as well as worshipping various effigies. Paul had to walk a fine line with them and the Jews who had become followers of Christ who still found meaning from their culture related to their Jewish faith. Paul had to help them all identify what was culture and what was sin, what was of God and what was not.
Our scripture today deals with another of those challenges, I call it fuzzy logic. If God’s love and forgiveness were somehow tied in with grace then the more we sin the more grace we would receive, right? These Roman Christian were having a hard time understanding that God’s grace is a gift freely given with no strings attached. In actuality the gift of grace frees us from the bounds of sin allowing us to develop habits of loving ourselves and others that we could never have done without grace.
We still struggle with this issue today. We sometimes even have the need to prove ourselves more righteous than another because we cannot accept that God’s grace and love have no strings for us or for anyone else. We are never closer to God because we perceive that someone else is further from God than we are. On the contrary we are actually turning our backs on God anytime we turn our backs on another. Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.—Matthew 25:45
Prayer: God of Grace, create in me a clean heart and a right spirit so that I may love more fully. Amen.