"Now the law came to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more..."
Romans 5:20

I was gonna go on for a while with this little series, but as my blogging isn't nearly up to speed with my Scripture reading, so I end up wanting to write lots more blogs (from what I read in a given day) than I'm able to post (due to time constraints from work, school, church, etc.) So, having said that, there are quite a few things I'd like to end up blogging soon, and, if I continue with this series, I won't ever get around to it. Therefore, this is the last iteration of the "mini-series"

On to the good part. We've been looking at some reasons why we, as Christians, are absolutely desperate, whether or not we realize it, for Scripture. The Bible tells us itself how utterly empty our lives as Christ followers would be if we don't immerse ourselves regularly in the Word. In fact, Peter says that we "have been born again...through the living and abiding word of God." (1 Peter 1:23). So, the Christian life is brought forth out of the word, and it is carried out in the word, to the end that we will ultimately worship the Word, Jesus Christ, for all of eternity.

The first week we looked at Paul's statement in Romans telling us that "through the law comes the knowledge of sin." Now, several chapters later, he takes it a step further and says that it continually increases our trespasses. He goes on to say that, through the increase of sin, grace was able to abound even more. We must handle a truth like this carefully, as if it were fragile. Paul says in the beginning of chapter 6, "Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means!" (Romans 6:1-2) We absolutely cannot take this passage to mean that we should sin, as if the Lord's grace needed our help in being displayed. Our sin is never justified by our claim to God's grace that follows; we are justified by faith in Christ. But "faith in Christ" is a bit ambiguous. So what exactly do we mean by that? (This gets a bit tricky, and I am inadequate in explaining it, but I pray the Holy Spirit enlighten you despite my weakness in exposition) Romans 6 explains the process further:

"We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him."

The key phrase for us is "our old self was crucified with him." Do you see the huge implications of this? The past tense of the verb is not referring to the time you prayed a prayer or walked an aisle, perhaps a month ago, or a year ago. How do we know it's not referring to that time in the past? Because the end of that phrase says "with him." The text goes on to read that Christ "will never die again" (v.9). So, he if you died "with him", and he couldn't have died again so to speak (like at the time of your conversion), then the text must not be read into but simply mean exactly what it says! Two thousand years ago a man, the God-man, Jesus Christ, was crucified. And one of the many amazing things that happened at Calvary that day was that you and I, if we are believers in Christ, were with him.

How can this be?? I didn't chose to accept Christ until over two thousand years later! So how could I have died with Christ? Surely not everyone in the world died with him, because not everyone ends up living to him and for him (which is the next part of Paul's argument; if we have died with him, we will live with him as he was raised from the dead). Paul explains it to the Ephesians like this:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him." Ephesians 1:3-4

Paul goes on to use this phrase many times over to describe the amazing blessings we as Christians have in Christ. But what I am getting at is this, because we were in Christ, and were so before the world was even spun into motion, we were crucified when he was. Therefore, our sin is dead. It is nailed to that cross. That is why we can't take the original passage and misconstrue it to give us a ticket for sinning.

I know I got off on a HUGE tangent there, but it's hard not to when the Gospel is so rich in those texts. =) I hope that made some sense and encouraged you in what Christ has done for us!

So, all that to say, the word teaches us of our sin, and it in fact increases our shortcomings since there are now, through the law, more rules to be broken. We will fail. But, if we stay in Scripture, we won't go on failing in order to "make grace abound" because we will have seen all that other stuff I went off on, namely, that we are dead to the control of sin as we are in Christ. And this is the Gospel. We have sinned. We have been saved. And through our constant failures, we can be thankful that our Savior is still more constant.

I hope this sparks an attitude of worship and thanksgiving in our hearts as we see Christ as beautifully gracious and sufficient. Amen.