September 22, 2024
Passage Read: Romans 4-5
Meditation Verse: 5:12
Thought
Through Adam, sin entered into the world and brought death with it. Death spread to all men because all men also sinned, even without any specific Law having been given. All men weren't condemned in Adam's sin, but through the sin that entered into the world through him. Sin crouches at every man's door, seeking to possess him, and sadly every man gives into it, such that God can say that every inclination of our hearts is only evil from childhood. We freely surrender ourselves to sin early on, and so rightfully earn the penalty of death. So death spreads to every man because sin is relentless. It never rests but pursues every man, it hounds every man, until every man gives in to it, to one degree or another.
Application
Sin is basically disobedience. Fundamentally, it is seeing self as arbiter of truth and righteousness; it is self-determination. Righteousness is obedience, full submission to God as Maker and Ruler over self. So sin exists wherever men choose to determine right and wrong for themselves, wherever man ignores God and His will for his life. So it exists even where there is no revelation of right and wrong from God. To be righteous, a man must seek God and acknowledge Him as Ruler over him. The sinner has no such concern, but happily goes his way, deciding right from wrong as he pleases. Repentance, then, is forsaking self-determination and returning in full submission to God, seeking to know His will and ways, and to do them. Repentance acknowledges God as Ruler over self, as determiner of right and wrong for me. That requires faith, faith in God, that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. Faith in God that honors God as God is fundamentally righteousness, and results in repentance, a change in how life is fundamentally lived, turning from self as god to God as God. And Jesus is the means whereby I can be transformed and transferred from a slave to sin to a pursuer of God, from someone condemned by my sin to one justified by my faith in His completed work.