The Choice

For the past little while, I've been noticing some areas of sin in my life which had hung around for a while. To be perfectly honest, that is at least in part because I haven't seriously been fighting against the sin in my life. This is why when I was reading Romans 6 today, the Holy Spirit had some select verses to bring to my attention.

Before we get to them though, a quick review of Romans 6 is in order. The overarching thrust of the chapter centers on the Christian's victory over sin. Specifically, the believer's current victory over sin. In the context of the rest of Romans, Paul is refuting the idea presented at the end of Chapter 5 that Christian's should sin freely to exult God's grace and forgiveness. For those of you who love theological terms, this relativistic Christianity is call antinomianism (literally No Law).

Paul's argument in Chapter 6 is that our sin nature died with Christ on the Cross. This means that instead of being freed to sin, the Christian is actually freed from sin. Indeed, to sin is to willfully ignore the effects of Christ's sacrifice for us.

While the whole chapter speaks to this issue, there were several verses which specifically jumped out with application for my life:

"Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 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. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace."
(Romans 6:12-14 ESV)

Paul's admonition isn't new. It was stated more concisely by Joshua back when Israel first entered Canaan:

"And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."
(Joshua 24:15 ESV)

The question of sin in our lives is not a question of whether we can stop sinning, but rather whether we will stop living in sin. Sin is not unbeatable, or inevitable. It is something that we can overcome through Christ's strength. This leaves us with one final question: will we choose to move forward in Christ's victory, or decide to remained a slave to our sin. There is no other option.

In the post above I briefly touched on the idea of antinomianism, which is one attempt to answer the question of how the Law relates to the Christian. What do you think Scripture says on this topic, and how should that affect our daily lives?