Lesson for 7/31

Hey all, the Sunday School lesson for tomorrow comes from Romans 6:1-4,12-22 "Death Becomes Life" This is a very fascinating set of scriptures that honestly speaks and teaches itself! If we briefly recall from previous lessons, we know that as believers in Christ, we are saved by grace. Its not about our works, but what Jesus did! Here we find verse 1 of Romans 6, Paul poses the question, "Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? You could imagine Paul asking this because as humans, we often try to find a loophole or reason within our thoughts to make something wrong, seem right. "Someone may say well, if I go ahead and lie or fornicate, just to name a few, God will keep forgiving me! So i'm good, right?" Wrong! As proclaimed followers of Christ, we acknowledge that we have died to our sins! Not to say we won't make a mistake or mess up at times; but we are not to continue to LIVE in it. Meaning, day after day after day with no effort of doing better. Verse 4 "For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives." The lesson jumps to verse 12, but I challenge you to read 5-11 for an even deeper revelation! Verse 12, "Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give into sinful, lustful desires." Very challenging at times, to speak for myself. But we must stand strong and deny our flesh; One way is stay rooted in prayer and reading, another way could be surrounding ourselves with other believers, on top of that, distancing ourselves from unwise areas or situations helps tremendously too. The lesson continues on, Verse 13-14 - "Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. We should use it to do what is right for the glory of God! Sin is no longer our master, and we no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God's grace." The powerful verse 17 says "Thank God, Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey that doctrine that was delivered to you." Pause, ever remember going to church because your parents made you? Or sticking with something that you really didn't want to do, but you had to? You may have felt someone would judge you otherwise, or you may have been "doing church" to impress someone. Well to tie this together; now we as Christians go to church, sing, minister, encourage, put our best effort forward, because we feel compelled to! We fellowship or have bible study or small groups, because we wholeheartedly want to better serve God! We are not BOUND by same law the Pharisees were inflicting back then, however Paul is telling us that because we are made new in Christ, that should MOTIVATE us to try and keep it! For example, we know the law says do not kill, so as Christ followers, we aim to upkeep that law by not killing others, whether physically, verbally, or emotionally. Sin should not be our master, we should live each day striving to please our Heavenly Father more and more. I encourage you to continue reading, I will close with the last verse 23 of this lesson. "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal live through Christ Jesus our Lord.

Thanks for reading, God bless!