Wednesday after the Fifth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Scripture: Romans 6:12-18 (NKJV)
6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! 16 Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? 17 But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. 18 And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
Devotion
What does it mean to have been set free from sin, and to be a slave of righteousness? In Martin Luther’s seminal book The Bondage of the Will, the sainted doctor presents the answer to these questions and expounds on the realities of what the Apostle Paul presents in today’s text. Saint Paul tells us that spiritually we start out as wretched slaves bound to sin (inherited “original sin,” and our own faithless acts of omission and commission) and ruled by the sinner’s master, the devil. We do not make this choice, it has been bequeathed to us by our ancestors, and we simply stumble along in it.
But then into this miserable existence comes God the Father, who in His gracious mercy sends His incarnate Son to ransom you out of your pathetic slavery to sin and the devil by creating a regenerate spirit and faith within you through His Holy Spirit and His holy Means of Grace.
None of this is your doing in any way. You are completely passive, but once this happens you are bought out of slavery to sin and the devil by the grace manifested in Jesus Christ as your Redeemer Lord. Now by faith you are a new creation (regenerate spirit) with a will that is bound to righteousness as its rightful master. This regenerate spirit implanted by grace looks in faith to its Lord and Redeemer, desiring only to please its Master out of love for what has been done and given by grace.
Prayer: O God, the protector of all who trust in You, without whom nothing is strong and nothing is holy, multiply Your mercy on us that, with You as our ruler and guide, we may be found to be faithful to Your Word and will. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
