Putting Our Sins to Rest
Romans 6:1-4 (ESV)
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
We all have bad habits. Like snacking on greasy potato chips when you get bored, or leaving your shoes right in front of the door when you get home. It takes a lot of conscious effort to stop bad habits, because we have unknowingly trained our bodies and minds to perform them. And after a while, we do them automatically. When we try to stop the bad habits, it’s almost like they cling to us.
When you accept Christ as your Savior, He takes on our sin and pays the price for it. Even though Jesus has dealt with our sin, we can still struggle at times. It takes conscious effort and commitment to Christ to not fall back into old sins. We can take comfort in that Jesus is always sufficient for these type of situations.
This passage talks about us becoming new creations with Christ. Just as He was raised to new life after His crucifixion, when we accept Christ as our Savior, we are also raised to new life. Because of our sin, God was able to show us grace, but that doesn’t mean that we should continue to sin, now that Christ has set us free from sin.
But we must persevere! Remember the great price that Jesus paid for you. He gave us victory over our repeated bad habits. We need to take some time to think about the sins that we are struggling with. Why do we struggle with them? Sometimes when we are able to figure out the reason that we fell into a bad habit or a sin in the first place, it helps us be more conscious of circumstances that tempt us to sin.
This week, ask God to make you more conscious of those times. Pray that He will put those sins to rest.