Friends in Christ Weekly Message
June 28, 2008

     So, since we're out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we're free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it's your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you've let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you've started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!
Romans 6:15-18 (Message*)

Some have argued throughout Christian history that since we're no longer under the old covenant of law but the new one of grace, we are free to do anything. Once we're “saved” anything goes.

In truth, grace serves to help us find our way to obedience, not to excuse our disobedience. Paul points out here that if we give ourselves over to sin, we become a servant to sin and no longer live in the freedom of God. Grace does allow us to get beyond our failings, but we must keep sincerely trying to follow God's ways in order to stay in a state of grace.

Grace is a free gift, but we need to accept it. Turning away from God amounts to rejecting it.

Bill Samuel

* The Message version ©2002 by Eugene H. Peterson.

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