Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Romans 6-7
Key Verse
Romans 7:2 — “For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.”
Devotional Thought
Paul has just spent five chapters of Romans explaining that salvation comes by grace through faith, not by works of the law. Now he anticipates the obvious objection: if grace abounds where sin abounds, why not sin more? His answer is emphatic—”God forbid.” Baptism, he explains, is not merely a ceremonial washing but a burial. When we were baptized into Christ Jesus, we were baptized into His death, buried with Him, and raised to walk in newness of life. The old man—that former self enslaved to sin—was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be destroyed. We are no longer servants of sin but servants of righteousness, and Paul thanks God that the Roman believers had obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine delivered to them.
Yet chapter seven reveals the struggle that remains. Paul describes a war within: the law is holy and good, but sin takes occasion by the commandment to produce covetousness and death. He cries out, “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” This is not abstract theology but the raw experience of every believer who has ever resolved to pray more faithfully, to speak more gently, to resist a persistent temptation—and failed. The inward man delights in the law of God, but another law in the members wars against the law of the mind, bringing him into captivity.
In the dead of January, when resolutions made just weeks ago have already begun to fray, these chapters meet us with unusual honesty. The winter season itself preaches the same lesson: the ground is frozen, the days are short, and our own strength feels thin. Paul does not tell us to try harder. He points to the resurrection. Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. Because we are united to Him, sin shall not have dominion over us either. We are not under law but under grace.
The chapter ends not with despair but with a question and an answer: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The battle is real, but it is not the whole story. The same Christ who died unto sin once and lives unto God has made us alive unto God through Himself. Reckon it so. Yield your members not as instruments of unrighteousness but as instruments of righteousness, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.
Reflection
- Where in your daily life are you still yielding your members as instruments of sin rather than instruments of righteousness, and what would it look like this week to reckon yourself “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God”?
- Paul describes a war between the law of his mind and the law of his members. When you experience that same struggle, do you run to Christ as your deliverer, or do you retreat into shame and self-effort?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I thank You that You died unto sin once and now live unto God, and that in You I have been buried and raised to walk in newness of life. I confess that the war Paul describes is my war—I delight in Your law after the inward man, yet I often do the very things I hate. Deliver me from the body of this death. Let sin not reign in my mortal body, and let me not yield my members as instruments of unrighteousness. Make me a servant of righteousness unto holiness, bearing fruit that endures to everlasting life. Amen.