Hello Everyone,

Part of the reason Jesus has to start from scratch is that…in our OLD way of living, we had a warped way of thinking.

Paul points that out when he asks the question:
“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” Romans 6:1

Romans 6 – he asks the question (my paraphrase)
“If God loves to forgive us our sins… why don’t we sin a lot and make God really happy?”

That’s the way we would have thought in our old way of life.
For many of us, the object of life (back then) was to find out how close to the edge we could live w/o getting caught.
AND SO (we would reason) if I’m now free from the past… and God loves forgiving me… why I can just go out live like I used to and whenever the guilt of life gets too far out of hand, I can just come back to God and get some of that forgiveness He likes to hand out.

Now, you might say: nobody thinks like that!!!
Yeah… they do

A lot of people aren’t so bold to say it… but by their actions it is exactly what they believe:
They come to church on Sunday… but on Monday… well, you fill in the blank

That’s not to say that God doesn’t forgive us when we stumble in our faith. He loves us so much that He DOES desire to forgive us whenever we repent.
We shouldn’t allow ourselves to abuse God’s kindness to us.

But Paul knew that’s how some of us might think… and so he said:
“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” Romans 6:1
Hey! If God loves to forgive us… let’s sin a lot so that God can really be happy!

Then Paul writes:
“By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Romans 6:2-4

In other words, Paul is saying “Think! When you became a Christian did you die to your past??? (Yeah you did) Well, what do you do with dead things? You bury them!

So… when you died to sin, you were buried in the water of baptism.
But you didn’t stay buried. Because, then you were lifted out of the water as if you were rising from the dead. AND when you rose up from that grave of water – a new man is rising from the dead.
Jesus had given you new life.

Oh How HE Loves Us!

Pastor Phil