Continuing my musings on Grace and Law, I read Romans 6 today which linked in with one of Andrew Farley’s ideas (Naked Gospel). I think I agree with him, so here is my potted distillation of the point. Disagree at will:
Romans 6 talks about us dying to sin with Christ and I think this helpfully connected with Andrew’s idea that when we welcome Christ into our lives, when we accept what he’s done for us and receive him by his Spirit, we are Spiritually transformed from that point on. We are a ‘New Creation‘ and that doesn’t need to happen again, we are made blameless before God.
Pretty life changing stuff, and I believe a Biblical backing for Farley’s point that we don’t need to keep living under the law of beating ourselves up about sin. I think many Christians, including myself, have often been trapped in this half understanding of Grace, when the truth is we are fully set free, fully new and as such are able to have a relationship with a perfect, sinless God.
Where I disagree with Farley is where he seems to suggest we no longer need to ask for forgiveness when we become Christians. (Now this might not be what he is getting at, but this is my understanding of what he’s written so far). Helpfully the later part of this passage goes on to deal with this issue of sin in the lives of those transformed.
We sadly don’t stop sinning completely when we enter relationship with God, but the point that I think Romans 6 and particularly verse 11 makes, is that sin is something outside us, an outside force. Not for us to pass the buck to, saying ‘Oh sin made me do it Miss’ because as with everything in this world we live under God’s gift of ‘Free Choice’, but sin is not in us anymore, it can’t be if we are in relationship with God, but never the less we still do ’sin’. It’s this choice to sin that we repent of.
I have found it helpful to describe the difference like this. We’re no longer sinners when we are in relationship with God, sin does not define who we are, but we still fall foul of the act of sin.
It’s been life changing over the last few weeks to realise this subtle difference. We no longer need to live in the shame of sin because it’s not who we are, it’s just what we do, which is sad and is important to seek forgiveness for, but we don’t need to beat ourselves up about it, we are glory filled new creations and that is hugely liberating. Christ has bought us this position by his life blood, the appropriate response to this seems to me to be one of massive thanks.
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