Die

Our culture doesn’t deal with dying very well. I mean we are getting more and more familiar with violent deaths because of the popular media, but dealing with actual death of those around us or even ourselves is something that eludes most of us.

We should be ok with dying. We should look forward to dying. But life is so complicated, so cluttered, so crowded…with selfishness, with me.

In my Scripture reading this morning I read in Paul’s letter to the Romans about death and life. You see that in order to live we must die.

In chapter 6 Paul mentions death in 16 or more different ways. Christ’s death, our spiritual death, our death to sin, and even our eternal death if we don’t choose life in Christ.

He is teaching about spiritual death. In dying we get new life. We get real life. We are freed from slavery. We must die to ourselves and to sin, which is bound to our own selfishness. When we choose sin over Christ we are choosing to be bound or chained to sin. The chain gets tighter and tighter as we choose sin more often than Christ.

Sadly, right now I see young people I know who are choosing sin over Christ. They are miserable as slaves, but they don’t see the chains that bind them. They are missing out on the joy of true life, but poorly choose chains over freedom.

It is a decision we all must make…the free gift of God in Christ Jesus…or slaves to self and sin and eternal death.

Once we make the decision to die to sin we are to continually turn to Him, to become slaves of righteousness. Sin may still be attractive at times when we are weak. Be strong in your new life in Jesus. You are freed from sin, you live with Him, you are alive to God in Christ Jesus, use your bodies for righteousness to God.

Right now our church’s baptistery is decorated like a tomb. It is so cool to have that visual, because it is a reflection of this chapter of the Bible.

“…all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death. Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” Romans 6.3-4