Letters to My Grandchildren: Dying to Sin

My Dear Grandchildren,

Well, time for another letter. I hope that these are helpful to you. Let me know if you have any questions. I would be happy to do my best to answer them.

In another letter, I had raised this question. ‘How is a Christian, someone whom Jesus has rescued, to live?’ This is how I answered it. ‘There are many good answers to that question. Here’s one: the obedience of faith.’ Well, here is another good answer to that question. A Christian is to work at dying to sin and living to righteousness.

Putting Sin to Death

In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul wrote a lot about sin. And that makes sense. Sin is the problem that we all face, a problem that must be dealt with if we are going to be restored to our Creator. And Jesus has come to deal with that problem. Paul also wrote about how Christians are no longer in the Adam group which is under the curse of sin and death. We are now in Christ, freed from the power of sin, freed to obey God’s Law, freed to live well. And yet, as you know, it is still the case that, all too often, we, like Paul, do not do what we want but do the very thing we hate. We still sin. That is something that we need to acknowledge. But the Gospel tells us that we’re not stuck there. We can, bit by bit, get rid of our sins.

And that brings us to what we’re going to look at this morning. How do we get rid of our sins? Listen to what Paul taught.

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. Romans 8:12-13

There are many things going on here. Let’s work through some of them.