Romans Chapter 6 Confession

Should I keep sinning so God can keep forgiving me while I take one step forward and five steps back? I have left my old man behid me when I recieved Jesus into my heart. I am a brand new person with a new nature in the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When I was lowered into the water, it was like the burial of Jesus; when I was raised up out of the water, it was like the resurrection of Jesus. I was raised into a light-filled world by my Father so that I can see where I’m going in my new grace-sovereign nature. 


My old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive END to that sinful, miserable life. I am no longer at sin's every beck and call because I am submitted to God! I believe was included in Christ's sin-conquering death, I was also included in His life-saving resurrection. I know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word over me! When Jesus died, he took sin down to hell with him, but alive he brings God down to me. Sin speaks a dead language. God speaks my native tongue, and I hang on every word. I am dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did.


That means I must not give sin a single vote in the way I conduct my lives. I don't even give it the time of day. I don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. I throw myself wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, I was raised from the dead!—into God's way of doing things. Sin can NOT tell me how to live. After all, I’m not living under that old tyranny anymore. I’m living in the freedom of God. 

So, since I’m out from under the old tyranny, does that mean I can live any old way I want? Since I’m free in the freedom of God, can I do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. I know well enough from my own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy my freedom. Offer myself to sin, for instance, and it's my last free act. But offer myself to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All my life I've let sin tell me what to do. But thank God I've started listening to a new master, one whose commands set me free to live openly in His freedom! 

I can readily recall how at one time the more I did just what I felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse my life became and the less freedom I had. And how much different is it now as I live in God's freedom, my life healed and expansive in holiness, yes? 
As long as I did what I felt like doing, ignoring God, I didn't have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do I call that a free life? What did I get out of it? Nothing I’m proud of now. Where did it get me? Nothing, but a dead end.

But now that I've found out I don't have to listen to sin tell me what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling me, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin my whole life and my pension is death. But God's gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, my Master.