Devotional Romans 6: Dead to Sin and Alive in Christ Reflection on Romans 6: the price of sin, the transformation of conduct when accepting Jesus, and what it means to be true slaves of righteousness. Topics: Devotional, New Testament.

Devotional Romans 6: Dead to Sin and Alive in Christ

Today’s devotional is found in the book of Romans, chapter 6, and this is what happened.

Synopsis: In this chapter, Paul sends another letter to the Romans explaining how our conduct as Christians has now changed. As Christians, we must be dead to sin and alive in Christ. Furthermore, we must be slaves to righteousness and never to sin.

Observations

These were my observations:

1. Dead to sin, alive in Christ. Jesus Christ came into the world, sent by God, of His own free will to save us from our sins (John 10:18). He was completely innocent of any sin—He was the only man to ever exist on earth who never committed a single sin (1 Peter 2:22). But His sacrifice was necessary so that God could forgive us and not judge us according to the Law. For the wages of sin is death, and all human beings, since Adam, have sinned (Romans 6:23, 3:23). Therefore, the perfect sacrifice was necessary (i.e., the death of someone with an immaculate soul to atone for all the sins of humanity). That is to say, in order for God’s justice and mercy to be fulfilled, someone qualified (Jesus Christ) needed to pay the price of justice for our sins, so that God could give us His grace and mercy. However, now that we can receive the gift of eternal life by believing in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we must change our conduct. The fact that we are justified by faith does not mean that we should simply stop keeping the laws. It is quite the opposite. We must strive to obey and keep God’s commandments and laws to the best of our ability. For only in this way will we honor Jesus’ sacrifice and demonstrate that we truly believe in Him and, consequently, in God (John 14:15, 21, and 23). Only through our conduct can we show that we truly serve and worship Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
2. Slaves to righteousness. As Christians who place our faith in Jesus Christ, we must be His slaves. That is, we must seek and long to be slaves to righteousness and not to sin (Ephesians 6:6). After the fall of Adam and Eve, the earth was cursed and human beings were condemned to death (i.e., sin entered the world) (Genesis 2:17, 3:17–19, Romans 5:12, 6:23). Human beings began to be slaves to sin, and this perpetuated from generation to generation. Sinful men had children with sinful women, passing down the genetic inclination toward sin to their descendants. That is why it is very difficult (practically impossible) not to sin. Because of this, Jesus Christ was the only one who could save us, as He was a perfect human being and at the same time God—His essence was as pure as possible (John 1:1, 14). This is not a reality that we with our human genes can replicate. However, we must try with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength to love and honor God for having sent His only begotten Son to give us eternal life. To do so, we must literally become slaves to righteousness. For as human beings, we can only serve one master with all our strength (Matthew 6:24). And whoever serves another is their slave (Romans 6:16). In other words, to honor Jesus we must become His slave. We must dedicate our lives to serving Jesus Christ and, consequently, God. Therefore, when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we become His slaves and serve Him in accordance with God’s commandments, laws, and precepts.