Abandoning Sin and Choosing Faith

In Romans 6:1-14, the apostle Paul writes about abandoning sin and choosing faith. But what the heck is sin? We talk about it; we assign human traits and judgements, but what? Sin is a spiritual state in which we are separated from God. The core teaching of the church is this. God saw that we were spiritually distant from God because of our sin. God put on flesh and came to Earth as Jesus.

Jesus simplified the various laws given in the 10 commandments. The commandments had two purposes: to ensure humanity loved God and their neighbors. Right? But society set many guidelines, rules, and institutions that God was not loved, and our fellow humans were hurt! The Roman authorities executed Jesus because he represented a threat to their order. Something happened during this execution because Christians believe that our sin was forgiven in dying. God sacrificed God’s self to may our relationship right with God. But people began to have encounters. They claimed to see and experience a risen Jesus. These hopes of forgiveness of sin and restoration of a good relationship with God and humanity make the faith compelling.

Paul argues that we are baptized into Christ and into his death. This happened once on the cross and occurs to this day and eternally. This means that God has forgotten our sin and its power over us, and we are free to live a new life. God bought our lives with Jesus’ death and gave us hope that life does end with physical death.

In short, we are given a new start when we believe that Jesus died for our sin. We no live in shame of our worst day, the worst thing we have done, our worst evil; instead, we are free to live in a new way. This does not mean that we will never sin again, but it does means that when we do, it’s forgotten. Your debt is paid! The bills are paid!

So, how can we abandon sin and choose faith? :

Confess that your relationship with God is broken, and ask for forgiveness.

Stop your sin (anything that keeps you spiritually from God) and start over.

Believe Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for your sin.

Talk to God…God listens!

Find a Bible in a version you can understand and read it.

Get involved in a Church. Go to coffee hour, join a small group, and ask questions!! Small steps lead to deep faith.

Comments

Our World Needs to Move Beyond Two Choices!

By Carol Meile I have a bee in my bonnet. Lately, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the plague of binary thinking that pervades our culture. It is literally tearing it apart. We have good and bad, light and dark, red and blue, MAGA and progressive. All these binary dualities of thought and to what end? We haven’t solved any of the major issues in our country. In fact, we have used our binary culture to kick the can down the road to the point of garbage being in the streets, homeless people in mass encampments, and the poor, regardless of location, largely forgotten, and we treat migrants inhumanely. This has to stop. There are millions of color combinations hundreds of economic and political approaches, a country can do things other than erect walls at its border, and we house and feed everyone on Earth. All of this is doable. We have the technology. What we don’t have in this country is any form of will. A pervasive laziness has taken over society. We have a...

College and the Church

There was a day when the world consisted of small villages subsisting on agriculture. Tiny places where everyone knew and were probably related to each other. Education was a rare commodity in such places that even the elite found it difficult to attain. During this period, the most educated within society were the clergy. The church needed clerics to be able to read scripture, translate the Bible, and educate the landed elite and future clergy and monks. At the advent of the Industrial Revolution, there was an increasing need for basic elementary education and universal elementary and eventually, high school became an expected rite of passage for children. College education became increasingly critical as the post-war economy shifted from factory-based work to a knowledge, technology, and financial services-based economy. Fewer Americans are going to college now. In fact, fewer parents support their children attending high...

It's the Simple Acts of Kindness

I remember watching members of the evangelism team at a local megachurch wandering the streets of Downtown Minneapolis, handing out tracts and praying with people in an attempt to lead them to Christ. My kids attended Sunday School there because the Sunday School at my home church wasn’t very good at this point, so I was a regular at their Sunday evening services. I noticed that I never saw people who had prayed with this team in the auditorium. Instead, I met a lot of folks whose lives had been changed through the food pantry ministry, the chemical dependency clinic, their children’s participation in the private school on campus, and the bookstore. All of these spaces provided acts of signs and wonders in these people's lives that they could expressly point to, and that led to them changing their lives in the way God was calling them to. Just preaching the word isn’t enough. It must be follo...

Seeking Salvation : Christianity, Faith, Methodism

Search This Blog