Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Corpses

A. "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry."

B. "You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge of the image of its Creator."

C. "I have been crucified with Christ and no longer live, but Christ lives in me."

D. "Who will rescue me from this body of death (corpse)?"

Check it.

A. is a difficult command.

B. is a (continually being) realized truth.

C. is a realized truth.

D. is a fully answered question (Hint: Look for "E").

Put it together.

Sin is failing the command of A., denying the truth of B. and C., and getting the wrong answer to D.

And as much as the straight-A student in my hates getting an answer wrong, the next level is worse.

Sin is attempting to throw a corpse on my back and hoping to get life from it.

Sin is parading around with a dead body on my back and naively claiming, "It's better this way!" It's not rooted in any sort of truth. In fact, the opposite is true.

Carrying around a corpse sucks. It's heavy. It provides no life. It's not very fun. It's tiring.

It's a denial of a precious truth.

If you are in Christ, your old self, your sin, is dead. Gone. Fully removed. Nonexistent.

That might not feel true, but your feelings are pretty much worthless (I'd like to use another phrase to describe those feelings but I'm trying to keep the blog PG).

If that's true, then you don't need to carry that corpse around. You can bury it. You can cremate that sucker. You have a new self and it is being renewed in the image of its Creator.

Don't toss a corpse on your back. That's kinda gross anyways.

E. "Thanks be the God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

That's good news.

A. Colossians 3:5
B. Colossians 3:9-10
C. Galatians 2:20
D. Romans 7:24
E. Romans 7:25

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