Vital Union (4)

Guarding the Temple!

The Epistle to the Romans expresses to us in such glorious detail the very truth and depth of our lives in Christ, what we have been delivered from, what we have died to and what it means to have new life in Him.

Romans 6:5-11 “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 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. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that he died, He died to sin once for all: but the life that He lives He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord”

Dead indeed to sin, alive to God! We are to reckon = to count, to look upon as being, to rely or depend. We are to reckon ourselves dead to sin because we are united to Christ and He died to sin, therefore we too have died to sin. This is such a profound, simple statement of scripture and I wonder how often we skip Romans 6 to get to Romans 7 because Romans 7 seems to be more of our experience. I wonder if we focus on and think of our depravity first and forget the truth that we truly have New Life in Christ and new life means something.

New life means that sin no longer has dominion over us, we are dead to sin and alive to righteousness. New life means we are no longer slaves to sin we have become slaves to righteousness. Because of this we are to present our members as slaves of righteousness, to let not sin reign, to not yield our members as instruments of unrighteousness instead as instruments of righteousness to God.

How can all this be but that we are no longer under law but under GRACE. How do we reckon to be dead to sin but to rely upon, to count on and to depend upon this Grace as the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8). How do we guard the temple from defilement but to occupy ourselves with God. We battle the flesh and the best weapon we have is the love of Christ and His Word, the more we meditate on Him and what is ours in Him, the more we feed on Him, the less we think upon or care about our old enslaving sins.

to be continued.....