Week 5: Day 5
Freedom to Choose Righteousness
Scripture to meditate on:
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 6:15-23
Devotional:
Our freedom from sin and our call to righteousness help us to see our freedom in Christ. This principle is one we often need to double-back on because it is so easy to lose hope in the type of freedom Christ offers but rather look to the world and embrace the freedom it offers instead.
Questions to ponder:
- How has Christ’s redemption set you free from the power of sin in your life?
- In what ways do you embrace your role as a “slave to righteousness” in Christ?
- What choices can you make today to align your life more closely with God’s righteousness?
