Amazing Grace #14

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. 15 What then? Are we to 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 who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. (Romans 6)

Paul digs even deeper into the Grace of God as we move on to Romans 6.  As we saw in the last two days, Grace now rules. Sin does not.  But we still struggle with sin in our lives.  If grace rules, how do we deal with this stuggle with sin and temptation? Do we just give up and say: "It doesn't matter anyway... I am forgiven in Christ; I am going to heaven, so it's no big deal."? No, and the reason is grace. Grace is that God-given ability, in Christ, to do what we cannot do on our own. The very nature of grace means that we take a more proactive approach to sin in our lives. Now we can do this. We can say "no" to sin's power, because we are not sin's slave anymore; we are slaves committed to obeying and pleasing God. We can and should present our lives and our bodies to God and say: "Here, Father, I cannot please your on my own, but you can turn my life around and make it what You want it to be, by Your grace. I believe You. I trust You. I want what You want. I receive Your grace.