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“Lord would You capture my mind’s attention and my heart’s affection.”
My dad’s dad died when he was 57.
My dad died when he was 42.
I died when I was 17.
My death was very different from their deaths. Theirs were physical, mine was spiritual. Verse 2 in this passage says that when I became a follower of Jesus I died to sin. And then was promptly raised to the newness of life in Christ. And yet I continue to sin. Paul seems somewhat flabbergasted in this passage. He doesn’t understand how believers (himself included) who have died to sin seem to fall so easily back into sin.
He is making a theological point here. In the next few chapters he is going to expand on this and then get very practical about how a believer should deal with sin. It is important that we correctly understand the theology of the problem before we try to fix the problem itself. Not doing this would be like me trying to fix my car that won’t start by changing the battery when the problem is actually a blown fuse. (There’s a story in that statement.) You can’t fix the problem of sin unless you actually know how sin works.
And yet I see lots of people who try to do this. They are weighed down by the guilt of sin and try to unburden themselves by “doing better” or buying their way out of their guilt, or reading a good self-help book that makes them feel better about themselves, or even by going to church. They don’t realize that the only way to deal with sin is through death.
And that’s the point of this passage. Ponder these verses. They are great preparation for what Paul has to say next.
Next Week’s Passage: Romans 6: 8-14
Memory Verses: Romans 8: 1-12