Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Unlocking Your New Identity | New Testament | Romans 6

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

How can we die to sin yet still live in it? When you believe in Jesus, something changes in you. In today's episode, Tanya walks through Romans 6 to discuss the power of sin versus the power of God in you. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Romans 6

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. One of my favorite things about people is getting to know their stories. For every single one of us, there's a treasure of life experience that unlock so much about who we are and how we've arrived in our current situations. When I had the opportunity to sit down next to a Catholic priest this week at a meeting, I was overwhelmed at the complexity and the devotion of his story. Our conversation started on the light side. He was getting ready to travel back to his home country, Uganda, for a four-week work sabbatical, and he was so looking forward to seeing his family.

He speaks four languages. One is a tribal language. He said only a portion of his country speaks because there are actually 46 languages spoken throughout Uganda. As we unlocked more about his home, I could tell how much he loved it there. So I asked him what brought him to the U.S. He shared two life markers that led him and keep him here in the United States. States in service to the Lord. First, he was what his mother called a miracle child. When he was born, healthy and safe, his mother dedicated him back to the Lord in service. And then of course,

growing up, he had a mind and a will of his own. But when he faced a situation that he thought he surely wouldn't make it out of in Uganda, he prayed for the Lord to keep him safe. And afterward, he gave his physical body over to the Lord for service for the rest of his life. Thus, he became a priest and took his first plane ride ever from Africa to the middle of the U.S. where he serves today. He was a beautiful story of awareness and commitment to God, awareness of God's saving mercy, and a daily giving over of himself to serve in the way that he feels led. As I was driving home from that meeting, I thought, I want to live more like that. I want to be more aware of the new life Jesus has given me so that it becomes entwined with my identity,

in a way that's visible, that it defines my life in a way that makes my yes to God so big that my nose to other things aren't so inconsistent and fuzzy. In a way that when people see me, they know who I'm living for. Like a priest who wears the black clothing, how can my life show who has all my devotion? In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve said, not your will, but mine. and this has become the motto that defined humanity. But in the Garden of Gassimini, Jesus reversed the curse when he said, not my will but yours, and changed us into people whose truest identities are in following God's will and not our own. Paul's teaching in Romans 6 is that because of Jesus, we no longer follow our own will.

Before we were united with Christ, sin reigned in our lives. Now, as Christians, we are free. from its control, but yet we still can allow it to have power. On the one hand, we're free to fight, we're free to win the battle with sin, and on the other hand, we have to still fight. I think this is incredibly important because it solves the problem some of us face with chronic doubt. Sin can make us question whether or not we belong to Jesus. Sin can let us question whether or not we really are what Paul calls a new creation. Sin can tell us to minimize it so we don't have to even face these kinds of doubts. Do you ever look at a sin pattern in your life or someone else's

and just think, there is no way that's going to change or that's going to get better? There are just certain strongholds that we kind of assume have more power than God does. Maybe we're not actively saying that. Maybe we don't even realize we're things. thinking it, but it's what we're believing in the quiet of our hearts. But it would be a mistake to look at sin to help us understand God. Instead, we need to look at God to help us understand sin. In Romans 6, Paul asks a big question of the Romans. He asks, how can we who died to sin still live in it? And I read that and I'm like, yeah, Paul, please explain why do I still live in sin? Why do I keep doing the things I don't want to do?

Then Paul, he does explain why. It's what he says and what he doesn't say that are important to understand. Verse 6. We know that our old self was crucified with Him, Jesus, in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. So when we believe in Christ, a change happens to us. We are set free from sin.

But Paul is not saying that sin has no influence over us, rather that it no longer reigns in us. In fact, our eyes are open to sin in a way that we weren't before. It doesn't dictate its rule over us unknowingly, and it can't dominate us because we now have the ability to resist and rebel against us. This explains why Paul followed up with the verses that urge the Christian who doesn't want to sin not to sin. I know, that sounds like a mouthful. verse 12, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. He's talking about the body there. Paul is telling us not to let sin have its way in us and not offer ourselves in service to it. Now, while sin still has the ability to lead us down wayward paths, we're actually going against our truest identity when we follow them. When we sin, we're acting against our identity because we are a new creation. When we sin, it's because we're forgetting who we are and what has been done for us in Christ.

What about you? Do you truly believe you don't have to sin? What difference would it make if you did believe that? You can look at sin or ask God to reveal it. to you and ask yourself honestly. Why would I follow that desire? It's not who I am. What is missing? What am I not believing or remembering when I do that? It would be futile to look at sin and the desires we have for it, though, and only say no or don't, because our new life in Christ is about living purposefully and proactively. It's also about do. Paul and

encourages believers to offer ourselves to God to live for him and offer the parts of our body as instruments to him in righteousness. So we can look at our feet and ask God to keep them from walking into situations or the darkness or temptation will overwhelm us. But let those same feet take us down paths where we can be the light of Jesus to people and places that are dark. We can look at our hands and ask God, to keep us from using them to waste time scrolling or waste desire accumulating more than we need. But let those same hands be willing to reach out to people in kindness and compassion and work hard to glorify God in our efforts. We can ponder our mouths and the power of our tongues and ask God to keep us

from being harsh, untruthful, unkind, and feudal with our words. But let those same same mouths speak words that build up, encourage, give meaning and purpose. We can think about our eyes and ask God to shut out what we might look at that will lead us down rabbit holes of lust or greed, but use those same eyes to see God's beauty and wonder. We can think about our ears and ask God to tune out the false messages that grapple for our attention and the mocking voices that make us doubt the words of God. but make those same ears open to godly feedback and instruction and truth about his goodness and love. We can think about our minds and ask God to protect us from being intellectually tied to anything less than the gospel, any messages that we can find fulfillment and glory in ourselves or in something

other than God. But fill those same minds with wisdom and discernment that come from knowing and following Jesus and his ways, even when the world doesn't understand them. We have been given new life through Jesus. We don't have to live for him out of obligation that he will one day be pleased with us. But we love to offer ourselves to him because we know he was pleased to give himself for us. We know we are those who have been brought from death to life, as Paul said in Romans 613. Lord, let us understand rightly the struggle we have with sin. Give us heavenly imaginations to see what it would look like to offer that part of our body to you instead of the sin. And give us the power to know more fully that we have died with Christ to sin and have been given a new purpose to live for you.

Amen. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday. that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.