Loving God, morning by morning, let this dear reader see Your mercies. In Christ Jesus we pray, amen.
I had a Sunday school teacher who was a rocket scientist. He really was. We lived in Houston and he worked at N.A.S.A. He was a brilliant man who somewhere, somehow, had picked up a quote from one of the Patriarchs and he would say, "Love God and do as you please." The quote is attributed to St. Augustine (other say Martin Luther), and it means in the right relationship with God we are free to live life guided by that relationship. St. Paul says something similar in today's passage from Romans 6:15-23:
15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, 18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. 20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Yesterday we talked about moving to a new country. Well, that move there takes us to a land where we learn to live as the others who live there. We left the land of sin, so we no longer live as blatant sinners, we live as grateful new residents of the land of grace. We live, Paul would say, modeling our lives after our "Master," presenting ourselves as righteous people who are on the journey we call sanctification. We now live as those who will never die; we've left behind those who live just to die. Paul closes this section with verse 23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
We now live as those who are proud to belong to Christ Jesus as the people of life and love. We have left behind the things that shamed us and made us people of self-centeredness and death. Are you inviting others by the way you live?
PRAYER: God of endless love and eternal life, thank You for the gift of Jesus Christ. May my life reflect one who has moved away from the things that used to embarrass me and You to the place where my actions are pleasing to You. Help me to leave behind the things that I embraced as a self-centered person, to live in a place where You are glorified. I pray in Christ Jesus' Name, amen!
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord.
Eradio Valverde
