Living or Pancakes?

Today at my church, I had the opportunity to give my pastor a hug and listen to him preach.  Pastor Matt Chandler spoke quite poignantly about the reality of sanctification as a pursuit of the Lord.  With the same fervor with which our desperately depraved members sought sinful indulgence, that same energy is now to be directed at holiness.  This is a confrontational passage for me each time I read and hear it.

The idea that we are slaves to sin while alien from God is a vivid picture.  This is the best way sin is described, since the beginning when Cain is questioned by the Lord in Genesis 4.  Sin is this personified thing that is trying to enslave and take control over us.  It wants to own me (Genesis 4.7).  BUT NOW….  We are able to live to Christ because we have died to sin.  A dead man has been released from the enslavement of sin, or as Paul says it, “For one who has died has been set free from sin.  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.” (Romans 6.7-11)

We get this privileged opportunity to look back at the former self, grit our teeth, and say, “You’re dead to me!”  That old man has been crucified in the cross of Christ and now the new self lives to Christ.  Let us unite in word and deed to put to death the old self, with its lusts and passions, knowing that Christ has killed that old self, and made us a new creation in his resurrection.