The Old and The New

 DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

THE OLD AND THE NEW

Rom 6:1-4

6:1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

NIV

There are two questions that are raised because of what is said here. The first is the fact that we died to sin, and the second is about our new life. We should deal with being dead to sin first. Surely, we would not want to go back to living a life of sin, which we came from when we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior. To say that we did not live in sin, or that we were a sinner, we would be calling God a liar, for all of us, have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. However, to say that we are free from all sin, or from ever sinning again would be a lie to ourselves. How then do we justify the fact that we died to sin, but still struggle with sin? Perhaps the difference here is how living in sin and committing sin are defined. Paul says that because we died to sin, we can no longer live in the sinful state we once were before repenting, which is changing the way we think about sin and about God. Once we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we changed how we perceive sin and we no longer desire to live under the influence of the evil one, pursuing our every passion. Because we died from that type of lifestyle and changed the course of our lives by living for Jesus instead, we are dead to that old life and alive to our new life. This then is the second aspect spoken about here, our new life. We died with Christ, only to be raised into a new life with Christ. Is then this new life in the here and now, or is Paul referring to the new eternal life we will be raised in? It would seem right to think that if we died with Christ in this present life we would be raised into a new life in this present time. Both these actions are a result of our accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We were transformed from a life in sin to a life in Christ. Our completely new life includes an entirely new approach and a completely different way of thinking and focus. Once we were focused on self-fulfillment, but we died from that focus, so now we are focused on Jesus, and doing that which he has called us to be and do. Once we were a child of the world, but we died, and were reborn, or born again as a child of God. We were transformed from that old creation living into a new creation life. Praise God for our new life.