Hello, dear reader. I’m glad you’re here. In this moment of global anxiety let’s take a moment to rest in the Word. I’ve been pondering how dangerous daily life was for Paul, and the joy he maintained in the face of every threat. His trust in God was wide and deep. This is not to say we shouldn’t be washing our hands and taking every precaution to stop the spread of the coronavirus. And we should be using science and our God-given brains to guide our decision-making. But there is a level of life that is truly out of control. This is the part we must hand over to God. These unknowns have always and will always exist, and we can’t have peace until we acknowledge the fragility of life is essential to its preciousness. I’m praying we can avoid making an idol of our worries, and focus instead on loving God and loving our neighbor. What does that look like in your life? For me it’s being prepared and at the same time being more attentive to where God is showing up today. In the kindness of others, in the beauty of the created world, in the spring that is slowly but confidently arriving. Take a look at my photo from this morning: it’s hard to see, but there is a robin high up in the tree.

Today we’re considering Chapter 6 of Romans. I love the idea of being a slave to righteousness. How can we go about being wholly committed to—and single-minded about—obedience to God, in a way that feels binding and permanent. 

Here is the text (NRSV):

6 What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For whoever has died is freed from sin. 8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. 13 No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. 15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, 18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. 20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

My Life Application Bible’s note to verse 11: “We should regard our old sinful nature as dead and unresponsive to sin. Because of our union and identification with Christ, we are no longer obligated to carry out those old motives, desires, and goals. So let us consider ourselves to be what God has in fact made us.” How great is that, the idea that we could be “unresponsive to sin,” that through Christ we might be no longer tempted to those things that harm us. And, above and below it all, we are covered by grace. 

One of the first Bible verses I remember memorizing is 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” I love the contrast of the payment—as if under an employment contract, in which the compensation for sin is clearly stipulated—with the free gift of salvation. It makes the choice so clear about who our “employer” should be. Sin no more the master, but Jesus the master we apprentice ourselves to. And this goes back to the beginning of Chapter 6, to the idea that it’s better to be a slave to righteousness than to be a free-will worker directed by sinful and selfish aims, because everyone knows how that turns out.

Is there a verse you know by heart that brings you comfort, that has brought you in safety to this new day?