Eternity Daily Bible Study: No. 528 Romans 1-8 - A Righteousness That Is By Faith Verses: Different Destinies Topic: Romans 6:19-23 Date: 24th October 2005 Romans 6:19-23 HCSB I am using a human analogy because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you offered the parts of yourselves as slaves to moral impurity, and to greater and greater lawlessness, so now offer them as slaves to righteousness, which results in sanctification. (20) For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from allegiance to righteousness. (21) And what fruit was produced then from the things you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death. (22) But now, since you have been liberated from sin and become enslaved to God, you have your fruit, which results in sanctification--and the end is eternal life! (23) For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Paul describes two very different life paths here: a) Slaves of Sin --> Greater and Greater Lawlessness --> Shame --> Death b) Slaves of God --> Righteousness --> Sanctification --> Eternal Life It is as if there are two different locomotives. One locomotive is the Hell-Bound Train and its destination is Perdition. This train runs on the twin rails of sin and death, and is powered by lust and lawlessness. The other locomotive is the Glory Train and its destination is Heaven and the Presence of God. This train is powered by grace working through faith and is glorious with righteousness, sanctification and eternal life. Now we cannot change where each train is going, but we can choose which train we ourselves will ride on. Just as when I was at school I could go down to Roma Street Station and choose to get a train that went West to Indooroopilly, or one that went the other way to Central Station. As a school student I had no power over the train schedule or destinations, but I could choose where I personally would end up. In these verses Paul says that we choose where we end up by choosing the spiritual master that we will serve. We can either offer our bodily members “as slaves to sin” or offer them as “slaves to righteousness”. The choice is ours. If we perhaps choose to go to wild parties, get drunk, take drugs and engage in gross sexual immorality we will become shameful people, controlled by our sin and lusts, and reaping the wages of sin, which is death. If on the other hand we use our bodily members in Christian service, worshiping God and helping others then we will become practiced in righteousness and reap sanctification and along with it eternal life. One way to picture this is to imagine sin as a cartoon demon, a spirit standing outside the body with tails and a pitchfork, beckoning people into various forms of wickedness. This spirit of lawlessness wants to control a physical body – yours! When you sin you are serving this spirit. You are aligning yourself with a spiritual reality that wants to possess you, control you, enslave you and destroy you. On the other hand we can imagine Christ the Good Shepherd, standing outside us beckoning us to the paths of righteousness and the ways of holiness that lead us to green pastures by quiet waters. To follow Him we must pass through the Narrow Gate and take the way of Faith. When we follow Christ we become grander and grander and stronger and deeper until one day we find that we are clothed in eternal life and in the great glory of a son of God. Paul points out the folly of backsliding from the faith: “And what fruit was produced then from the things you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death.” A wild weekend in Las Vegas may be a “good time” but at the end it just results in shame. The long-term cost of the gambling, the affair, or the STD that is acquired outweighs the transitory pleasure of sin. This “fruit of sin” is seen in bankruptcies, broken homes, jail cells, hospitals and city morgues. Even a “small sin” such as materialistic envy can have devastating long-term consequences – as the credit card bills pile up, the second-job is taken in order to “keep up with the Joneses”, and relationships are strained by jealousy and hidden hostility. In fact there is no sin that does not seek to become life-controlling and eventually totally destructive. Anger when entrenched leads to violence, laziness leads to poverty, lust leads to sexual addictions, disease and death, pride leads to isolation, and eventually to humiliation, and so on and so forth. On the other hand each virtue makes us stronger and better. Patience leads to proven character, joy leads to the strength of the Lord, faith enables us to move mountains and mercy means that God will be merciful to us. Virtues build community and enable love to flourish. The service of righteousness, especially in faith-filled community, leads to quietness and confidence forever. Isaiah 32:17-18 HCSB The result of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quiet confidence forever. (18) Then my people will dwell in a peaceful place, and in safe and restful dwellings. Thus the life of sin, and the life of righteousness are entirely different ways of being - with entirely different eternal destinies. The Christian is not to go back to the life of sin because its outcomes are totally incompatible with the Christian life. Rather we are to become slaves of righteousness, committed to staying on the Glory Train and thus receiving eternal life. Sin is a horrid thing, and we are not to offer ourselves to its service. Its fruit is shame and its wage is death. Christians have died to sin and must not live in it any longer. Instead we should be “enslaved to God” offering the members of our body for works of righteousness and receiving in our innermost being God's free gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Blessings, John Edmiston (johned@aibi.ph) REFER OTHERS: If this devotional is a blessing to you, maybe you have a friend or family member that would like to start receiving this daily bible study. You can forward this to them, and they can use the following link to subscribe. http://www.aibi.ph/eternity/ or they can just send a blank email to: eternity-dbs-subscribe@strategicnetwork.org BLOG: If you missed a day or would like to read the bible studies online you can catch up using the new Eternity Daily Bible Study Blog at: http://aibi.gospelcom.net/eternity/wordpress/ EBOOKS & ARCHIVES : http://www.aibi.ph/eternity/ - includes free ebooks containing each series of Eternity-DBS bible studies. 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