Wednesday, January 21, 2026
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 asks a question that every honest believer must eventually face: “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” (Romans 6:1). It is a question that cuts through the fog of easy religion. If God’s forgiveness is free and inexhaustible, why not keep a little sin tucked away for convenience? Paul’s answer is not a rule but a reality: “How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” (v. 2). He is not telling us to try harder; he is telling us who we are. In January, many of us are still reaching for resolutions, trying to white-knuckle our way into new habits. But Paul doesn’t hand us a self-improvement plan. He hands us a death certificate. Our old man was crucified with Christ so that “the body of sin might be destroyed” (v. 6). The person who used to serve sin has been buried. You cannot go back to a grave and ask the corpse to pick up his old habits.
Yet Paul is no naïve idealist. In Romans 7 he describes the raw war that every believer knows: “For what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I” (v. 15). He names the law’s goodness and the flesh’s stubbornness with unflinching honesty. He does not pretend that the Christian life is a steady march upward. There are mornings when we wake and find the same old cravings waiting at the door. There are evenings when we grieve the very words we just spoke. Paul calls himself “carnal, sold under sin” (v. 14) and cries out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (v. 24). That cry is not unbelief. It is the sound of a man who has stopped pretending.
But notice where Paul lands. He does not end in despair. He ends in praise: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (v. 25). The deliverance is not in our willpower but in our union with the One who died and rose again. We are to “reckon” ourselves “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (6:11). Reckoning is not pretending; it is agreeing with what God has already declared true. In the cold of late January, when the year’s enthusiasm has worn thin, this is the gospel we need: not a fresh burst of resolve, but a fresh sight of the empty tomb. Sin’s dominion is broken. The wages have been paid. The gift is already ours.
So today, when temptation whispers that grace makes sin cheap, answer with the cross. When failure whispers that you are still a slave, answer with the resurrection. You are not who you were. You have been married to another — to Him who was raised from the dead, “that we should bring forth fruit unto God” (7:4). The fruit may be slow, but the root is secure.
Reflection
- Where in your life are you still living as though sin has dominion over you, even though Paul says you are “dead indeed unto sin”?
- When you cry out with Paul, “O wretched man that I am!” do you stop there in despair, or do you follow him to “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I confess that I have sometimes treated Your grace as a license and sometimes as a distant hope. But You have crucified my old man and raised me to walk in newness of life. Teach me to reckon myself dead to sin and alive to God, not by my own strength but by Your finished work. When the law exposes my failure, let it drive me not to despair but to You. Thank You that the wages of sin have been paid and the gift of eternal life is mine through You. Make me a servant of righteousness, bearing fruit unto holiness, until the day I see You face to face. Amen.