This is what happens when we dig deeper into the Word. We start to evaluate our lives. Is there something in my life, Lord, that I am subjecting myself to, something that I am giving my time to, something that is not of You, that is not reflective of You? Does this mean you need to sleep, get up and eat, bless your food, pray, read the Word and spend all day in the prayer closet, never to come out because we are only going to serve Him? Of course not! We are to evaluate how we live our lives. Why? Because the way we live demonstrates if we are a person who lives their life according to the will and purposes of God.

As Paul says, “I die daily.” What is He dying to? His flesh and so much more. This goes beyond the 1960s era where we have quite a visual of what it was to live in the freedom of the flesh. It was lasciviousness, drugs and rock and roll—people took pride in subjecting themselves to the life of the flesh. Paul’s statement here runs much deeper than the external pleasures of the flesh. Paul denied not just his fleshly desires, he denied his personal desires and kept himself focused on the race, striving for submission to God.

Look at our youth today. How far are they from that mindset? Look at the adults today. How far are the adults from the mindset of the Spirit? We cannot watch a commercial without references to drugs, alcohol or sex, all of which subject us to the love of the flesh. We have the extreme “in-your-face” sin. We strive to pull ourselves away from that level, where it is not such a fight and we are not bond-servants to it anymore. Or maybe it’s not a fight we have every day, because we have allowed God to do a work in us to pull us from the world and into Himself.

We hear of people that are engaged in pornography, in drugs, in alcohol, in carnal relationships and God does such a transformation in their lives the moment they get saved. They step out of all of it and are completely set free; all they want to do is live a life for Christ. They die to the flesh and live for Christ.

We have that extreme black and white but then there is another area that, until you dig deeper into the Word, you do not understand, where God is calling us out of this lifestyle. He is calling us out of a lifestyle of gossip, out of a lifestyle of judging, condemning, murmuring, rebellion against authority, and so on. Out of a lifestyle where we our heart-motives keep us separated from Him.

So, you can see there are stages when you first get saved. Those outright sins that, with the Lord’s help, you can separate yourself from easily. And then there is the next stage where you start working on the internal things, the things that are not so in-your-face, not so prevalent in your life that just pop up every now and again.

Paul spent two-and-a-half decades working this stuff out of his own life before he wrote the book of Romans. He never told them to do something that he himself was or had not been fighting to do himself, ever. He preached what he lived. No one had to tell Paul to live what you preach; he preached what he lived. If he never wrote it down, they would have seen it demonstrated in his life. By writing it down, Paul shared with us the secrets of his own transformative walk with our Lord.

Here we are centuries later, reading about his internal struggles and his fight for holiness, his fight to live a life of righteousness, a life of integrity of virtue—purity of life, uprightness, correctness in thinking, correctness in feeling, correctness in acting. That is what a life of righteousness is. Paul shares his struggles and his fight with us. Why? Because he knows those reading his letter had the same struggle, the same fight, and he is saying, “I am with you in this. I get it, I have been there. Let me take you by the hand and let us walk this journey together and let us get through it, together.”

The life of holiness is a life of one who is walking in a newness of life. This is a person who begins to walk in a level of freedom not yet experienced. Freedom, because they’ve come out from underneath the bondage of sin, that thing that they used to be a servant of, a bond-slave to. Philippians teaches us that a bond-slave is one who has given their life over to another, whether it be to the ruler of this world, or to the Lord. We studied what it means to be a bond slave; it means you have committed your life forever to that person. If you loved your master, even after you have served your time, if you loved him, he did right by you. Your family was taken care of—you commit your life to serving him forever. He would take you over to the door jam and pierce your ear, thus demonstrating that you are a bond-servant for life.

What does this mean for believers? We come out from underneath servitude to the world, take the earring from the world out of your ear and you go to the Master, the One you live your life for, the One who loved you enough to die for you and you go to His doorpost and you press your ear against it and He marks you. You wear the mark of your new Master, and every time you pass by that door post, you are going to remember—your ear might even burn a little bit—but you remember Who you are serving.

Are you serving the owner of this doorpost? Are you serving the One who died for you? Are you living a life that demonstrates a newness of life? Are you shedding off the old and putting on the new? (Romans 6:4, Galatians 3:37, Romans 13:14) We have done so many comparisons on shedding off the old man and putting on the new man—the life and character of a believer today, what it should be when we walk in a newness of life. What or Who are we obeying?

Romans Chapter 6 really lays this out for us.

When we walk in newness of life, we become servants of righteousness. Our thinking changes. We become a person who is walking with Christ. With Him. What does Romans say about being with Christ? We are baptized into His death, we are buried with Him, we are planted with Him in the likeness of His death. Think about His death and resurrection. There was not a part of His flesh that was not touched by His death. It touched His emotions, His body, His psyche, His Spirit—all of it. A death on the cross was a very public, very painful event. When Jesus gave of His life, declaring, “It is finished,” He was speaking of One who gave up His life. He submitted His life, His Spirit, His flesh, unto God. No one could take His life. He handed it over that we might walk in a newness of life.

So, who are we serving? That Master? The One who handed His life over to us? Or the master of this world? Who has pierced our ear? Are you with Christ? Are you a person that is baptized into His death? When we are baptized into His death, our old man becomes crucified with Him; the body of sin becomes destroyed. That means any part of you, whether it is your emotions, your body, your life, any activity or anything that engages you in an activity that separates you from God, needs to be submitted to the cross that you might walk in newness of life. When we die with Him, we live with Him. The further we walk on this journey, the deeper our commitment becomes to newness of life, and the dominion death no longer has over us. (Romans 6:9)

Mom (and others like her) experienced suffering for a long time. When it seems like she can handle no more, God speaks to her and says, “You are overcoming death.” That is a profound statement, to “overcome death.” Without Christ, what is the purpose of death? To separate us from God. Sin is death. Sin separates us from God. The enemy’s plan is to separate us from God. The power of death—to separate us from God—is lost when, through our suffering, we overcome death! If we separate ourselves from sin, submit ourselves, our flesh, our mind, our soul to the cross—becoming servants of righteousness—the power of death over our life is gone.

To be continued next week…

Blessings & Love,

Ricci