Reading your Bible for today April 9

April 9: Romans 6:1-4

KJV Key Verse: Romans 6:1
1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

Devotion:
Do you have to put your hand into a fire to show it is hot? Well, maybe, but when you have found out it is hot, do you then have to keep putting your hand in every now and again to make sure? We need only to stand close enough to feel the heat rather than placing our hand into the flames to know the fire is hot and that it continues to be hot. Once we know fires are hot, we only have to see flames from a distance to know then where the heat is; we know then to avoid places where we see flames.

Why then should our lives be any different towards sin? Once we find out from God’s Word what sin is and what the penalty is for sin, why should we then go back there? We do not have to continually try a bit of sin out to find out if it is still sin. We do not have to get involved with it just to make sure. Just like a fire, the longer we play with it, the more we may think we have confidence in it and the more we then get involved with it… only to find out that it bites us when we are least expecting it!

We do not have to go for a ‘sin dip’ to make sure we still will find forgiveness in Christ! We have His promise! He has died for our sin already! Is that not good enough? Once we have found out how sin will affect our relationship with God, that alone should be enough to make sure we steer clear of it for the rest of our lives. Yet we continue to break God’s laws in our lives because we are used to doing it. We have built up habits from the things we have thought of in the past which we got involved with and now continue to do. We are not bound by these sins. We do have the choice to stop them; but do we have the will-power to stop?

God has given us the way we can defeat sin so we can spend our lives with Him. It does not mean we can continue breaking the laws right up until we die, knowing that we are saved… we still have to answer to what we have or have not done! Christ saved us from our sin and gave us a new life; let us try to live that life to the full with Him.

Points to Ponder:
How often does something have to happen to you before you believe it?

How often do you have to break God’s laws before you see they are wrong?