Deleted Scenes: Romans 6:1-14 "May sin be as attractive as eating ____"

I’ve been thinking more about what Paul says in Romans 6, which we talked about at The Bridge on Sunday. He says that in Christ, we’ve died to sin and been set free from it. As I said on Sunday, this can be difficult to reconcile with the reality that many of us still struggle with the pull of sin. Some of us might even question our salvation if sin continues to be present in our lives. What do we do about that? I suggested on Sunday that a key to this is “counting ourselves” accurately. The more we understand who we truly are in Christ and the authority we have in him, the less of a hold sin will have on us. 

There’s another angle to this I didn’t talk about on Sunday, though. One of the ways we see that we are in Christ and that the Holy Spirit is working in us is our distaste for sin. Formerly, we may have been seduced into thinking that sin was good and appealing. In Genesis 3, we read similar words about Eve in the Garden of Eden: “when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” (3:6) Paul describes it like this in Ephesians 2: “all of us lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.” (2:3) We craved sin, believed it would satisfy us, and pursued it recklessly. 

Just to warn you, this is about to get pretty...earthy. I have some friends who recently got a puppy. The cuteness of this puppy was simply too much for them to say no to. And the puppy really is cute. She’s very furry and very affectionate. However, I later found something out about this puppy that means I will never let her lick my hand again: this dog has a strange attraction to other dogs’ poop. She just loves to eat dog poop. My friend will try to talk sense into her after catching her in the act but a week later, she’s eating some other dog’s poop again. How do you train a dog to stop loving poop? I don’t know. I’m not a dog trainer. Apparently my friend hasn’t figured out the answer to that question either, because the puppy keeps doing it.

I do, however, know a great way to stop loving sin (the moral equivalent to poop). A great way to stop loving sin is through union with Jesus. Right after that Ephesians 2 verse about gratifying the cravings of the flesh, Paul writes this: "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:4-5) He made us alive with Christ. This is similar to what we talked about in Romans 6: if our faith is in Jesus we are, in fact, dead to sin and alive in Christ. We are united to Him, and as I said on Sunday, this happens through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Here’s what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 about the difference that the gift of the Spirit makes: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” Our bodies are temples of the Spirit, and the implication of that is that we will honor him with our bodies. You see, when God’s Spirit dwells in us, sin loses its flavour and taste. The more we are filled with His presence, the more we will hate sin and find its presence in our lives undesirable (to say the least). Is this not true of you? You may struggle with the pull of sin and may long to see more victory over it in your life, but you can probably say with confidence that following Jesus has made sin much less attractive. You want to honour the Lord with your body, because you have been united to Him through faith.

Ask the Lord to make sin as attractive to you as eating poop (as attractive as that would be for a normal human. Don’t pray that sin would be as attractive to you as eating poop would be for a dog, apparently). May your union with Him shape your identity more and more, so that sin loses all its illusionary flavour.