The Plumbline

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:20-23 NLT) Most of us have heard that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life. How many of us have actually read the previous verses? We WERE slaves to sin - having absolutely NO obligation to do right but choosing quite frequently to do whatever it was that gave us satisfaction or a thrill. The result was an overwhelming load of guilt and shame. A burden we weren't designed to carry! Slaves don't really cater to the 'obligation' to more than one master, do they? They serve one, following whatever desires...

Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself. (Thomas a Kempis) We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin . And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:6-11 NLT) We were set free - nothing should give us greater hope that our lives are on a new trajectory than hearing those words. Especially when it doesn't seem like much has changed because we are still struggling with lifelong habits. Remember - change isn't always in...

So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us. (Colossians 3:5, 10-11) Put to death...put on your new nature. These are very clear instructions - put the old away, put on the new. Stop going back to the old - stick with the new. How? Be renewed - we need a renewal process to occur. It is not enough to just say 'yes' to Jesus - one must press in to know him well, forsaking all manner of sin, and embracing this new life in Christ with all the passion we once put into pursuing our sin! In counseling realms, we call this the 'put off - put on' dynamic. We 'put off' some behavior that is not good for us to pursue and we replace it with one that is honorable, upright, an...

God is the one who enables you both to want and to actually live out his good purposes. (Philippians 2:13)  When God enables us, he makes us able, giving us the power or ability, as well as the means by which to live holy and upright lives. Consider who is doing the enabling and we might just begin to see our course of action as different than what we might have originally believed it ever could be. On one hand, we work hard to obtain or realize a goal, without anyone really helping us realize that goal. On the other hand, when someone comes alongside, bringing talents we don't possess and apply those talents toward the end goal, we might just realize the project comes to fruition quicker and easier than if we struggled to do it alone. There is something about being enabled to do something which gives us a certain freedom or liberty to pursue it with a greater passion and purpose, isn't there? Imagine your spiritual goals. You should have some, you know! If you don't, the...

"What were you thinking?", I said. Then I realized I wasn't thinking! It is necessary to set my understanding straight on occasion, or you allow the 'inner fool' to go on thinking that thinking was "spot on". What happens when we don't respond to the foolishness? We allow a plethora of other stuff to continue on as though it did not matter. The inner fool looks for validation - when it doesn't find resistance to its actions, it takes this as validation. It is difficult to stop, take the effort and extreme amount of patience to speak with the fool around you, but sometimes it is harder to speak to the one within you! Yet, it is the very best course of action to prevent a flood of ill-effects from that 'inner' folly. Answer a fool in simple terms so he doesn’t get a swelled head. (Proverbs 26:5) We use simple terms to speak to the simpleton. No fool (even our inner fool) is responsive to some lengthy theological argument - the simplici...