Romans 6:15-23

The passage begins by establishing that we are slaves to either righteousness or sin. However, the term 'slave' encompasses that we are bound to something. I'd like to think that it's our choice, that we don't do this out of pure obedience (to either God or the world). With God, our relationship is not that of a master & slave, but of master & ready and willing servant. We do this willingly. But yes, we can only serve one master (Matthew 6:24). Slaves obey their master to gain acceptance from their master. Servants of God are the exact opposite: we obey God because we are accepted and loved.

But anyway, we can choose one of two paths: with or without God. Both choices are heavily documented in the Bible. Life without God or slavery to sin is the easiest, we don't have to do anything! Sin is in our nature, we don't have to work hard to achieve it. That's exactly how God's people strayed away from God -- they had a great relationship with Him in the beginning, but they didn't work to live completely for God and naturally fell away from Him. So once a while, God had to send messengers of rebuke to wake up the Israelites. He ended up sending 14 prophets.

And if God just kept it that way and decided to wait 'till we've turned bad and send a prophet to rebuke us, we'd be screwed. If it were that way, we'd have had a couple hundred prophets, each telling us "dude, repent or die.". And each time, we wouldn't learn anything. That would suck to have to face God's routine 'nag' every other decade or so.

But God didn't do it this way. Parents know that nagging doesn't work, it's just annoying -- children hear it and dismiss their parents. The children may complete the task, but they will not be willing or full-hearted with the task. God sees this and stops nagging us with prophets. He does what any parent would; He gives us an ultimatum and sends down Jesus, who wipes our slate clean. So we either follow Jesus and be righteous, or follow ourselves and stay sinful.

If we were to follow our own ways and stay sinful, that could only lead to death. But because Jesus took our place on the cross and took the weight of our sin, we can be sin-free as long as we trust in Jesus. Doesn't that sound like the easier path to go through?

We can either mope around in our sin or live in Christ. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

Sonia