ROMANS 6:17-23
Beloved children of God, we are all born into this world with a sinful nature. The unredeemed person is under the tyranny of sin which controls their thoughts, words, actions and total existence. Jesus declared in John 8:34 that “everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin”. The sins of the world and the lust of the flesh controlled you and told you what to do, when to do it, how to do it, how much of it to do and who to do it with. You were so in love with a life of sin.
Fortunately, we win victory over sin, when we die to sin and become alive in God through Christ Jesus and we experience a lifestyle change. When we die to sin, we gain the ability to live a victorious life free from sin and death. Being alive to God means we should start building a new lifestyle, we should start building some new and healthy relationships, we should start changing how we talk, how we behave, how we act, where we play and who we play with. After we accept Jesus into our heart and decide to follow Him, we begin a lifestyle change from focusing on self and worldly things to begin focusing on God and His kingdom.
When we were in sin our future was death. But now that we have been freed from that life of sin, the new future we get is sanctification, our future now is not death but eternal life. This is summed up nicely in Romans 6:23 “for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life”. Righteousness leads to holiness; sin as a master promotes wickedness.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus Christ calls to Himself those who are willing to be inwardly transformed by Him, who desire an entirely new nature that is created in His own holy likeness. He calls to Himself those who are willing to exchange their sinfulness for His holiness. He calls to Himself those who are willing to die with Him in order to be raised with Him, who are willing to relinquish slavery to their sin for slavery to His righteousness. When you come to Him on His terms, He changes your destiny from eternal death to eternal life. VICTORY OVER SIN. PRAISE THE LORD!
PRAYER POINT: My Father and My Lord, please send the Holy Spirit, into my life to rescue and empower me and to restore me to intimacy with my heavenly Father.