Romans 6:8-11

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for      all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

 When we think of something alive, what do we think of?  We see things grow and move. Living things typically have colors that are more vibrant; some living things we see, eat and reproduce.  Recently    I visited a pet shop with my daughter and she could not get enough  of a certain tank of fish.  The fish were bright neon colors and they swam in a school. They had eyeballs that moved and occasionally you could see one dive to the bottom to pick up a stray piece of food.       It’s often easy to associate life with creatures and plants, but Scripture addresses our spiritual life.

According to verse 11 of Romans 6, we see that we are to consider ourselves dead to sin.  What does this mean?  Well often sin breathes, moves, grows, and reproduces in our lives.  If we do not kill it, then       it will spread like a weed affecting different parts of our lives and         becoming harder and harder to uproot.  In order to “consider yourselves dead to sin” we must cut it off at the root and do it as     soon as we recognize it.  We must do our best to remove ourselves from any opportunity to engage in that sin and do absolutely nothing to encourage its’ growth in our lives.

There is a flip side to this though.  Not only are we to consider ourselves dead to sin but we are to consider ourselves “alive to God    in Christ Jesus.” This means we do the exact opposite of how we are  to treat sin. We should as often as possible give opportunity for our relationship with God to grow.  This means godly fellowship, digesting His Word, memorizing His Word and speaking to Him through prayer.  We will never float closer to God and further away from sin, it takes intention to both kill sin and love God.

The murder of sin and the flourishing of God in our lives is all made possible by what Christ Jesus did on the cross. Earlier in Romans 6,  we see that we should count ourselves to have died with Christ and have been raised to new life with Him. Jesus died once for sin but lives eternal for the glory of the Godhead.  May we remember that Jesus’ death and resurrection provided us both the death of sin and life in God.

Pastor Jamie