“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid! How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” Rom 6:1-2 KJV

In preparing for our weekly Bible study I had the opportunity to spend some time mulling over this passage of scripture. One of the references that I use a lot (The KJV Parallel Bible Commentary) brought out a point that I had never really thought of in quite this way before.

Through the ages there have been many that argue that the Doctrine of Justification had to be incorrect because it didn’t make sense. Their argument is essentially that if God has forgiven us and treated us as righteous, regardless of what we have done or will do, that this mindset would lead one to continue in sin because there was nothing to encourage them not to. Meaning, in short, if God’s going to forgive me anyways I may as well have some fun along the way! I doubt that’s exactly how the argument would be presented, but that certainly seems like the general gist !

Paul, apparently anticipating just such an argument, goes on in the next few passages to lay the ground work for this doctrine. While it is certainly true that God freely and fully forgives us, that gift is only granted after a heart felt, sincere appeal and repentance. Absent that sincerity, all the words and works will do us no good at all, because it’s all done for the wrong reason. Paul goes on to argue that we are dead to sin, that the very body of sin might be destroyed, and that if we are in fact freed from sin (forgiven by God) then we’d have no desire to continue to live in sin. And I think that right there is the very key to the argument.

If we are sincere when we seek God’s forgiveness and turn our lives over to Christ then the very idea of continuing to intentionally live in sin wouldn’t even cross our minds! We’d have such a heart felt desire to serve God, and to live for Christ, that our sins would no longer be a source of enjoyment, but rather a source of torment that requires us to face them head on and, through the power of Christ, overcome them. It’s about our reason for doing, or not doing, things that is the difference. We do not need to serve God out of fear, for we are already justified through faith and faith alone. But we choose to serve Him out of love, respect, admiration and gratitude! Talk about a paradigm shift!

So the question we are faced with is are we truly dead to sin? Not are we perfect, for we won’t reach that point this side of heaven. The true test I think is that when we know that something in our lives is sinful, how do we deal with that? Do we recognize our need for change, or do we just say “God will forgive me anyways”. If we take measure of how we respond to sin in our own life, we will have a very good barometer of where our relationship with Him stands.

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