Friends in Christ Weekly Message
June 25, 2011

     So then, don’t let sin rule your body, so that you do what it wants. Don’t offer parts of your body to sin, to be used as weapons to do wrong. Instead present yourselves to God as people who have been brought back to life from the dead, and offer all the parts of your body to God to be used as weapons to do right.
Romans 6:12-13 (CEB*)

The ways we customarily respond to various patterns and stimuli become engrained in our very bodies. They become embodied. Our body learns to automatically respond.

To give an illustration, think of driving. When you are first learning, you are consciously thinking of every move of your hands and feet. It seems overwhelming! But when we are experienced drivers, we do many of these actions without consciously thinking of them. Many aspects of driving have become embodied.

These embodied responses may be patterns without any intrinsic moral content. But some of them are morally good or bad.

When we become followers of Jesus, embodied patterns don't just suddenly fall away. We need to be alert to those that are sinful. We must retrain our bodies to remove embodied sin and embody the ways Christ teaches us to live. Only then can we fully live the resurrection lives we are promised.

Bill Samuel

* Common English Bible ©2011 Common English Bible.

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