Nailed to the Cross with Christ
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Romans 6:8-14
Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the Cross with Christ, a decisive end to a sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you: God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.
That means you must give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.
This translation is from “The Message.” Sometimes I am challenged to figure out what I’m reading, and this translation puts it in modern-day English for me! Of course I always first, or after the fact go back to my NIV translation—which is closer to the original translation. My NIV bible notes indicate that “the believer who dies with Christ is raised to a new quality of moral life here and now. Resurrection in the sense of a new birth is already a fact, and it increasingly exerts itself in the believer’s life.”
That means that the more we come to understand the power of Christ’s death and resurrection, the more we want to turn our lives over to God and to doing what is right in His eyes. It becomes harder and harder to sin when we have to walk past the mirror of our salvation every time we walk out the door! I like how we’re told “Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life.” Don’t even go back there—look ahead to eternal life, and weigh your actions based on that promised reward!
I also like the fact that this translation states that “When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us.” God made man, taking on the form and shape of imperfect, sin-filled creatures to save us from ourselves. Wow! How could we ever repay that kind of act? We can’t! And that’s the point. Since we have received a gift for which we could never repay our God, we are compelled to use the gift for our own good and for the good His world.
We hang on every word of scripture, and search out the truths we need to rely upon to live a live worthy of the gift. And though we know that the best we could ever do is try to be perfect, we also know that our sincere attempt is adequate—because of Christ.
I hope today you’ll declare your own decisive end to a sin-filled existence. And that never again will death have the last say in your life.
Mary
