Sunday 11 June, 2017

7 Brothers and sisters, I am speaking to you who know the law. Don’t you know that the law has authority over someone only as long as they live? 2 For example, by law a married woman remains married as long as her husband lives. But suppose her husband dies. Then the law that joins her to him no longer applies. 3 But suppose that married woman sleeps with another man while her husband is still alive. Then she is called a woman who commits adultery. But suppose her husband dies. Then she is free from that law. She is not guilty of adultery if she marries another man. 4 My brothers and sisters, when Christ died you also died as far as the law is concerned. Then it became possible for you to belong to him. He was raised from the dead. Now our lives can be useful to God. 5 The power of sin used to control us. The law stirred up sinful desires in us. So the things we did resulted in death. 6 But now we have died to what used to control us. We have been set free from the law. Now we serve in the new way of the Holy Spirit. We no longer serve in the old way of the written law.

Paul is using the example of marriage as a way of comparison. We all understand that at the death of a spouse the remaining spouse is no longer joined to that person. And so Paul uses this comparison to help us understand that at Jesus’s death, sin, that has kept us all bound to itself (like a marriage) is now finished and we, the remaining ‘spouse’ are free from it (sin). The Message puts it “ But now that we’re no longer shackled to that domineering mate of sin, and out from under all those oppressive regulations and fine print, we’re free to live a new life in the freedom of God.”

It’s actually quite a simple truth, but oh how we forget. As believers we forget that sin no longer has power over us, we forget that sin is actually dead. It no longer calls the shots and tells us we are to live a certain way or have no hope of breaking certain patterns or that this is how we are wired and that’s it. Sin is such a liar. Sin is dead. The simple truth is that we are free!!

Oh hallelujah!! Thank you Jesus that you have taken my sin ‘partner’ and put it to death. Thank you that I am free to live a completely different life – re-created life, though your grace and love. Amen.

Written by Suzie Hodgson