2004-09-12 - Are you Saved?

Part 2

Hey My Christian Brothers and Sisters,

He set us free from our sin so that we do not have to continue to live in sin and be eternally condemned for sin.

Why would God pay such a price to sacrifice His only Son so that we could just throw it all away and hang it up, lose it and not be saved?

- Or -

Why would he put us through the "Worry" of "am I saved?" "Uh oh, did what I do just now make me lose my salvation and relationship with God?" "Oh no what do I have to do to get it back!"

That's when we turn to works righteousness.

We begin to try and merit God's favor and try to do something to please him.

Romans 8:1-2 says "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death."

Read Romans 6:1-14:

"What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? ² May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? ³ Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? ⁴ Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. ⁵ For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, ⁶ knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; ⁷ for he who has died is freed from sin. ⁸ Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, ⁹ knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. ¹⁰ For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. ¹¹ Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. ¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, ¹³ and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. ¹⁴ For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace. (NIV)

We are called away from sin, however this does not mean that we will not sin. We aren't supposed to go out and choose to sin all we want just because we are set free from it. We don't have a "Sinning License" that authorizes us to go ut to have a party of sin doing everything and anything that we want. Instead we are called to represent the righteousness of God in all that we say and do. Unfortunately many Christian's don't do that, however that does not change God's promise. What it does is it leaves them no reward in heaven. We will be tested and everything in us that is not of God will be burned away till we are like pure gold. That work that we allowed Christ to do in us through the Holy Spirit will be what comes out. The works we did in our own flesh, whether outright sin and the good works that we did apart from God to merit his favor will be burned away.

To be continued.

Comments or Questions?
Rob

rob@cfdevotionals.org
http://www.cfdevotionals.org