“Seeing the Unseen Christ” (Week 14)
by Eric Rajaniemi
How did you do answering last week’s questions? I struggle sometimes keeping in mind that everything that I do is in service to Christ. It is the same with all other
believers in Christ. In the eyes of God service is service, none is greater than any other. This is why the person who mows the church lawn is esteemed just as much as the pastor. The person who cleans bathrooms for a living is just as good as the person who owns their own company. Christ left heaven, took on human flesh,
humbled himself so as to serve lost people, remained obedient to the point of death in doing so. This is how I must live my life. Be a humble servant of others and
reach out to help those who do not know Christ Jesus. God’s response to Christ being obedient to the will of God the Father was, and is, to highly exalt Him. God gave Christ the authority to require every knee to bow to Him one day, to cause every tongue to confess that Christ is Lord. As we obey Christ and live in servanthood to others, we give glory to Jesus and to the Father. As you can
discover by reading further in this chapter of Philippians, this is the way to work out our salvation, with fear and trembling for it is Christ who works in us and through us in order to do His good pleasure.
This week we look into Romans 6:5-14. This passage discusses being freed from the bondage to sin. Now, in today’s culture there is very little belief in the reality of
sin. Most bad things get redefined as being illnesses that can be medically treated, eventually. But that just isn’t the truth. Consider this: how would your life be different if you were a slave? Slave means one who is completely subservient to a dominating influence. Sin is the dominating influence upon all humanity.
In this discussion, please stop and consider how parts of your own physical body could be slaves to wickedness: tongue, hands, eyes, mind, intimate parts, stomach, etc. My tongue can be very hurtful to others, spreading lies, gossip, slander. My hands can do things that cause others pain and suffering. All of these are sinful actions. If I was not a slave to sin I would not do them. But here in this passage I am told that there is a way for me to break free from slavery to sin. My body members can actually become slaves to righteousness instead. The apostle Paul says that since we get planted together in the likeness of Christ’s death we will also be in the likeness of His resurrection into new life. Our old man (sinful nature) is crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be destroyed so that we should not serve sin any more.
The logic is that once we are dead sin no longer can enslave us. Of course, this is spiritual death that I am speaking of. So if we are dead in Christ as He died then
we believe that we will also live with Him in newness of life as He does. Christ died once to sin, but He now lives to God. Death no longer has any dominion over Him, so it now will have no dominion over us as believers in Him.
This passage then teaches that I should not obey sin in my lusts. We all have lusts, it is a part of our human nature. Once freed from the dominance of sin, we must
not allow our lusts to drag us back into slavery to sin. How? By yielding myself to God. This is what a person who is alive from the dead ought to do. My body parts are to become instruments of righteousness to God. This talks about being converted from sinfulness to righteousness through the work of Christ Jesus. Verse fourteen then tells us that this all happens by the grace of God, not by the Law of God.
Remember this important point: To whomever or whatever we obey, we become slaves to that. We must choose whose slave we are to be: God’s or sin’s.
Eric
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