The Raised Dead Sin Less

Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead

Romans 6:12–14,  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.

Whom among the body of believers across this world has not admitted their own failure with regard to sin? Who doesn't need to confess often his own weaknesses? But what keeps the child of God from wanting to plummet down that long rabbit hole into the bazaar world of lawlessness? Shall we be moved by Jesus' self-sacrificing example? Perhaps. But sin so jades my heart that such an example doesn't stand out to me in that condition.

I like the phrase in Romans 6:13b, ". . . but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, . . ." What does that look like? Well, I imagine myself having died first. Then, Jesus comes along in my corruption and mercifully raises me from the dead. I had nothing to do with it. And I certainly had no power to enforce IF there were some way to think about it ahead of the act! No, I simply lie there, looking up into the kind eyes of him who immediately has rendered himself eternally dear to me and think, "I am speechless at the grace which overwhelms me and has raised me up from this body of stinking corruption." You see the way I am thinking? No longer am I considering the sin that had me preoccupied. I am now thinking holy thoughts, but not just holy, rather Christ-entranced thoughts. As I gaze into his eyes, being the first think that my renewed eyes set their focus upon, I am so overwhelmingly engaged in the beauty of the grace and kindness of the One who released me from bondage, that time will pass without my ever having considered sin of any kind.

Do you see then that the power to overcome our sinful tendencies emanates not from my running away from sin (though there is merit in it), but in my absolute absorption in the sense of deliverance, a deliverance undeserved, and therefore so greatly and increasingly appreciated. So, I present myself to my Master as someone who has been raised from death to life. This is victory out of awe. Meditate on that.