Day 3730 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 6:2 NIV

Or don’t you know?

That as much as grace doesn’t increase out of some kind of senseless and selfish necessity so as to meet the necessity that so many seem to see sin as having become in what’s become a life in which we put ourselves always first and from there ask that all others bend to our will of wanting a life in which our freedom is not merely used as a cover for evil but in fact a license unto the doing thereof. For if grace were to increase as sin has, then His sacrifice would have seemed muted at the beginning.

But what is there to be muted in regard to the mercy that met us at Calvary with our cross upon His back and our sins upon His head as twisted into that crown of thorns which we ourselves bestowed upon He who came to go where all should but none should so desire as to all but demand daily the same death He’s already willingly died so that we might both share in that loss of a lost way of life but too, from there, within the very same walking out of the death that all life lost has been known to live?

No, there is no such violent misunderstanding of the miracle of our Messiah. We either humbly accept it and welcome thus the change it was meant to bring or we rather continue ahead as if caught permanently within the denial that we’ve always known.

Either way His victory doesn’t change.

All that ever can is that we can now share in it.

And yet how can we if not we do as He’s done? Is that not what sharing is? Is that not what imitating is? Is that not the overall design of such a deliberate loss of life as that left to the hands of those held in hatred of hope itself as come in the Christ who speaks still the truth a knife with which we’re all flayed wide and left there open both for all the world to see our every such dance with the decay of all depravity but too, and more poignantly, that we too may see then the same?

For let us be honest, were it not for the truth none of us would be guilty of sin. And thus none of us would so need confess our indifference, our sinful distress as we’d simply have none of such nothing to admit were it not a cause for admitting our admittance of such shameful substance at first into our eyes, then into our minds and then finally out through our lives as we live out that with which we’re filled.

But that we are filled with at least some passing knowledge of good and evil as defined within their most elementary understandings through our understanding of right and wrong, so too then are we then more than well enough aware of the right things to do and thus too the existence of the necessity of compensation through consequence as demanded of any and every wrong done unto the One who both defined wrong and then asked us to stay away from it.

For such was the first command.

Indeed, to eat not of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the first law meant to protect our ignorant liberty. For truly, ignorance is bliss in that it allows us to always miss what we know not to be looking to avoid. And thus, since those first of us chose to heed the call of hell as opposed to He who asked them to just live a life basked in the beauty of His blessed and benevolent bounty, so then too have we all now come to know the same as that knowledge they gained which was passed down through the awareness of mistakes made.

All because our making mistakes is among the greatest of inspirations we can ever find unto the instruction of any that we may love enough to so desire to not seem they too perspire to what we know will only become a self conspired against itself.

Yes, we confess our wrongs done unto those we love so that, through our humbled honesty we might somehow help them to avoid the same monstrosity.

Or at least that’s the best way in which we might work now on this side of so very many wrongs done that wrong is but now who we are.

But such is the question begged of this verse.

Do we not know that those who claimed to have lived in the sin with which they’ve since been joined to Christ in what’s become an awareness of the same as seen inside of shame are too the same as they who can no longer live life in ways the same as those which brought the blame that He has came to take in our place in what is a grace that overcame the grave and left that hole in this world’s ground as empty as our sinful depravity has always left us?

We cannot go on sinning so deliberately as there now remains no remaining sacrifice for such sinfulness.

Lambs and goats will not work anymore. Bulls bled beside some alter carry no remaining meaning. Even should we shed our blood in what may become such a miserable meeting of our daily failings with the bold audacity to admit we’ve found them so faithfully, even should we suffer for having done wrong, what good would that do? What good could that bring? What good would that mean in light of the Life that’s now lain down the same with absolutely no reason, no necessity of such a doing?

As the broken apart part of what was always intended to be a beautiful invention, we can now offer unto He who created us to be what we’ve never chosen to be absolutely nothing that in any way can ever seem to rival the lack of rebellion as seen inside the spotless Son who chose to die despite His owing no such price from within a life in which sin never won.

Not that the devil didn’t try, he just knew when to give up and accept defeat.

And it only took him a little over a month!

So what then are we doing still wrestling with the inevitability of all sinful depravity and the necessity now of our readily confessing that such has been all but the lone path chosen through what’s been a life we’ve lived only running from all God is to everywhere we think He isn’t?

After all, such is what sin is. It’s a knowing of the right thing to do and yet failing to do it. James 4:17. “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.” And well, what could ever possibly be more right than our turning away from death unto a new life, an eternal life? What could be more right than our then not doing the same wrongs that have kept us apart from the Life and thus running away from the same? What could be more right than humbling ourselves to the doing of all God asks us to do and none then of all He asks us not to?

Indeed, sin is simply a willful choice to miss God in the moments of a life in which He’s never missing as He’s never left us, never forgotten us, never forsaken us. We just left Him, forgot Him, forsake Him every single chance we get as given us by something that comes at us in what is a temptation that we’re more than ready to consider beyond what we can bear.

Yes, we left God because we learned to believe that we weren’t strong enough to resist the temptations that were meant, are meant to pull us away from Him.

Thus too that apparently our salvation has something to do with our strength or ability, as if He needs our help somehow.

No friends, the only way that we can help God is to stop doing the things He hates, each hated because of what they inflicted upon His only begotten. Yes, all we can give unto the One who’s never failed to give us everything we’ve ever needed is for us to stop living as if we need to sin. As if we need the pleasure. As if we need the entertainment. As if we need the self-appeasement. As if we need this continued agreement that sin isn’t so dangerous as to demand our very death.

A lie simply believed and believed so simply simply because it’s just easy.

It is easy to keep doing what we’ve learned to do so well over years, decades perhaps, of doing the same things religiously.

Indeed, unbeknownst to those all of us who’ve always chosen to never know the difference between religion and faith, we’ve made a religion out of being faithful to sin. So much so that we think of it our friend and thus find no reason to cut these ties with which we’ve lived to bind our lives to the blinding of eyes unto the violent necessity of our now doing differently if we do truly contend that His doing of something new was set to the tune of eternity.

For either we believe He made that way, that He is the Way to that place, and we thus live as if we have that most blessed assurance as seen inside of our doing all things different, or we do nothing new and in this confess that neither then do we seek any such life renewed.

Either way, both His work and ours will remain the same as what they’ve now been proven to be. His accomplishing new life, eternal life. Ours only running from the same into the things that bring us shame so deep that we deny the need of the grave as the place to be saved from what is a life headed there anyway thanks to the many ways in which we’ve failed and fallen thus short of the simple glory of God.

For it is not hard to glorify God. It’s not hard to praise Him. Though it’s a befuddle concept for me to consider, I must also imagine that it cannot be all that hard to please Him. For even His very Word speaks of a faith that is pleasing to Him, that which comes to Him believing both that He exists and thus He might truly reward such an earnest seeking of Him as done at the obvious expense of the many sins which have long stood between us, and are thus not welcome in His presence.

Because He is not pleased by anything that so poisons or pollutes His people. And thus if we’re to ever live as if we’re His children, then we must thus agree to the very beginning again that Christ died to help us understand just how violently needed. Yes, that He died for our sins should show us just how deadly our sinfulness really is.

I suppose then it’s just a matter of either simple agreement or a continued refusal.

But make no mistake, there is no reward awaiting such a lasting refusal to uphold the Lamb of God in all the honor that He is so eternally due. After all, how might we ever run out of praise for He who took our place in that place of death so that we might only start there and then one day join Him in that place of peace?

No, such is why all sinfulness simply has to go. Not because it’s easy to walk away from those many depravities with which we’ve formed friendships. Not because it’s natural to seek out the losing of a way of life we’re perfectly able and completely capable to remain capable of living. Not because we can see right now the life to be found in the laying down of the only life we’ve ever personally known.

But simply because if truly we believe that Christ really did die for our sins, then my friends, how can we keep living in them?

If the things we’ve done caused the death of the Son, how can we keep doing them unless we take the gift and the grace so very lightly that we can simply shut off our awareness of it whenever should something else that’s allowed to still matter just as much shows up and steals our focus away? Should there be anything that’s so invited to steal our intentions?

Should not His sacrifice be more than reason enough to stay focused on His will so as to see what else He might prove able to do on that other side of crosses carried and sins overcome?

I know I want to know. I want to see what else He can do who overcame the grave. I want to feel the rest of the faith that trusts that He took my place so that I too might share in His. Yes! I want to see Heaven, and I want everyone else to reach that hope as well. And well, I guess that means that I can’t do as I’ve always done since now I believe that what I’ve always done was the very same as what killed the Son.

No, everything changes now. And in fact I’ve experienced so many of faith’s shiftings that I now fear only anything left the same as it was before. For behold, still is He doing that very same new thing that He came to both begin in us all and then still carry out unto its completion upon the very day of Himself. Why then continue to settle for the already seen and always done?

Seems that His doing of a new thing by which He makes all things new was done to make all things new. Not sure where we manage to miss the overwhelming clarity in that. But it might be a good time to stop looking for ways or reasons to do so. You know, before we have no time left to show Him we agree unto the need of things made new.

Just how new are you? Because chances are we’re still not new enough.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold