February 25

Read: Romans 6:6-8

Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him (Romans 6:8).

Christians No Longer Live In Sin

In the fifth chapter of Romans, Paul emphasizes that our salvation is by faith; that despite the worst sins we have committed, we may have “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” But Paul was afraid that some readers would make this doctrine of salvation by faith the excuse for a “sinning religion.” In the sixth chapter he therefore said a dozen times that followers of Christ are to be dead to sin.

What does the Bible mean by such expressions? What does it mean to be dead to sin? This much is clear, dead men are no longer troubled by the problems of the living. No stronger term of separation can be used. The Apostle asks, “How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” (Romans 6:2) The question carries its own obvious answer. He that is dead to sin no longer lives in sin.

Can we read the sixth chapter of Romans thoughtfully and conclude that sinning is consistent with a profession of Christian faith? Surely God means to say to us that salvation through Christ somehow takes a man out of the sin business. God’s full work of grace in our lives is designed to do away with sin — all sin in the soul. This is the clear truth that God’s Word

teaches. But we can be truly dead to sin only when the inner source of sin has been removed, when the old carnal self is dead indeed. Therefore the soul of man cries out:

O God, my heart doth long for Thee, Let me die, let me die; Now set my soul at liberty, Let me die, let me die.

— Jeanette Palmiter