Human Sexuality Series: Freedom from Sexual Sin (All of Life for God)
In a world that promotes pride, only Christ can offer true freedom from the guilt and power of sexual sin. Listen as pastor Christopher Gordon reminds us that Christians are dead to sin and alive to God on this week’s episode of All of Life for God.
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I invite you to turn to Romans 6. Romans 6. By way of introduction to this tonight, you know we're working through the catechism that I produced on human sexuality. I think we've passed all of them out, but so far taking the big themes of this, remember this is based on the Heidelberg Catechism as an extension in light of the challenges that we face today. We've looked at the issues of identity, we've looked at creation, we've looked at the challenges that come at us with gender in our day and we've spent time on that. I encourage you to go back if you haven't heard that, marriage we've spent time on and the fall last time is where we looked. We're now in the third section of this on redemption, so we'll be looking at redemption. Then we get into some very practical things in restoration about sexual sin, same sex attraction, pornography, these important issues that we have to address and especially the family, how family is to be structured and ordered.
Husbands and wives showing today a good example of what marriage should be to their children. That's one of the most important things that we can do. I'll be looking at, I said I'm promising a sermon for singles and training up children. And then of course witness is where the catechism ends. Tonight we're on this beginning, the third section which is on redemption, and I'm just going to read a few question answers here and you can go through. There's only four in this section. The first one is, what has Jesus accomplished for me in the gospel regard to all forms of sexual sin? And through true faith in the promise of God's Word and wholehearted trust in Christ by the gospel, God is freely granted not only to others but to me also the forgiveness of all my sexual trespasses, canceling all my guilt and meriting for me, eternal righteousness and salvation.
And then the next one, how does the truth of the gospel set us free with regard to sexual sin? And we're really looking at the heart of Romans 6 here, "Since I died, was buried and have been raised with Christ through his death and resurrection, I'm set free from slavery to any form of sexual sin. Christ has broken its dominion over me and now I live with a renewed desire to reckon myself dead to my old way of sexual immorality, but alive to God in pursuing a sexually pure life for His glory. Since I'm no longer my own but have been bought with the precious blood of Christ, what new identity has Christ achieved for me? By faith, I'm joined to Christ as a new creature and so I share in His identity. In my new identity I'm satisfied in God's love as his adopted child. I'm to think of myself as purchased, accepted, valued and protected, and I am to find great delight, to be remade into the image of Christ in true righteousness and holiness.
And finally, why are all forms of sexual morality incompatible with my union with Jesus Christ? The answer, since I've become one with Christ in body and spirit, any form of sexual morality invites that which is profane into my holy union with Christ. Therefore, I'm called to be one with Christ by fleeing all forms of sexual immorality. Let's read a bit of Romans chapter 6 tonight, Romans chapter 6, and I'll be picking up at verse one. This is the word of the Lord. "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that Grace may abound? By no means how died to sin still live in it. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life.
If we've been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. 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 shall also live with Him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him for the death he died, He died to sin once for all but the life He lives, He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
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've been brought from death to life and your members to God is instruments for righteousness, for sin will not have dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace. What then are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey either of sin which leads to death or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed and having been set free from sin have become slaves of righteousness.
I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations for just as you once presented your members as slaves, as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness. So now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification for when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you're now ashamed for the end of those things is death. But now that you've been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and it's end eternal life for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord and there will end the reading of Romans 6.
Well, there's often the challenge in preaching on sin that we are either too specific, zeroing in too closely that we miss the bigger picture. That's one challenge. Or that we are so general in preaching sin that it really doesn't touch one's experience so that it does not have the force of reaching deeply into people's lives so as to effect change. The Bible is not bashful however about sexual sin. This is something I think you read throughout the scriptures and at times you're really surprised about the things that it exposes about humanity and how prone we are to terrible perversities and what we do. Just think of what we have revealed to us. I mean, you can go back to Genesis, right out of Genesis and find Lot and the record of his daughters in the cave and you can find the record of Judah and Tamar and you can find the record of David and Bathsheba and these things are given there for a great purpose to show what we are prone and what we can do in this arena and perversity of sexual sin.
God's Word however, is not and it's careful to not dwell on the particular perversities of people so as to maintain a reverence for his word. That's important to say instead of making the perversity its focus. But that said, one of the things that I think has been amiss in the church today is that really the church has been too Victorian in addressing these issues of our day. We've all felt pressure. How far do you address this from the pulpit? There are children and I always say this is the best place for children to hear it. Where else do you want them to hear it? They're going to hear it on the playground tomorrow. So this is great for the children, this is important for the children. The culture is daily immersing us in this stuff and it's not just immersing us in little things.
It's pushing us into the most extreme kind of perversities and tolerance in the arena of human sexuality that we could even imagine. Think of all this swear. Where do I begin tonight? You know this. I mean, we were called up at the church and they wanted us, the church, to celebrate a drag queen festival down in Escondido. Did they know anything about the church or did they just do that to provoke us? What do you think? So we have to address these things to be wise in how we do it with the goal of helping people out of the disorientation of this all, if you will, the confusion in the area of sexual sin. And that's tonight where we're really looking at the deliverance from this. And I say that because there are many people in the church, men and women struggling with sexual temptation, some struggling with pornography, seeing no way out.
The entire culture is telling us and normalizing this and they want you to think that a porn-free life is not possible because that's what the culture is daily immersed in. I did a whole question and answer on this. We're going to have to spend some time on it. They want people to think this is not possible so that it's abnormal to not pursue these kinds of things since it's in private and doesn't hurt anyone else, which is a lie, which is a lie. So they're normalizing before us all kinds of perversities and that's a way for them to cope and to justify that this is good and right for people and so they're pushing their sins on the church, trying to submit the church in our day, submit the church on these issues. Well, what the evil one wants to do in this arena in all forms of sexual morality, especially God's people, is to lure us into it and then make people feel as guilty as possible, defiled as possible, unloved as possible, as if these sins are the unpardonable sins.
That's the work of the evil one. You can see the emotional toll this takes on people, the emotional toll this takes on young people who either attempt as they go out into the world, go off to college because their friends are justifying these things to justify it or give up because who wants the constant roller coaster of having to fight lust and having to fight these things when everyone else says freely live in it, it's happy. Freely do it. And I say that's the devil's plan for your life. That's the devil's plan for your life, for whatever form of deviance it is from God's good creation design, and you can go through the list tonight, homosexuality, transgenderism, gay marriage, pornography, He has the world on these issues.
They're already under the sway of evil one on these issues, but we have to be concerned to tell people the truth and to help deliver people from these issues, but we also have the concern to help people in the church with these issues because we're being bombarded with it. What he's trying to do is lure you in and then through guilt and shame either destroy you or make you give up on Christ altogether. That's his goal. This is what happened with Josh Harris. I don't know if you know that name, but he wrote one of the best-selling books years ago on dating and giving up dating as a Christian. It was one of the best-selling books and just recently he gave up on it altogether and says, "I'm just tired of feeling like there's no power in any of this stuff. I give up, I renounce Christ. Do what you got to do. I'm going to go do what I've got to do."
Well, that's probably going to become more common. Many people are abandoning Christ in the gospel having to do with this area of sexual morality, not just on an intellectual level. We should know right now when most people want to justify these things and they say, "I've become a philosopher or I've become someone who studied and I feel like I'm in this constrictive oppressive environment and now I'm free." It's never really an intellectual thing. I've rarely come across real philosophers in this. What we come across are people who are trying to... It's a moral issue. They're trying to justify a path of sin that they have chosen and then they use it intellectually to justify it. That's what we constantly see. The worst form being, trying to wed together Christianity with this stuff and say there's a Christian way in the midst of all of this.
These things affect older and younger. If you're someone on the roller coaster of guilt and struggle for these sins and you wonder where is God's power, where is God's deliverance? This seems so hard, this seems so difficult. Well, that's what this sermon's all about tonight. That's my aim in this sermon. Think about deliverance for a minute from this. We'll move on to the practical stuff coming, but we have to start here. We dealt with sin last time in the fall and we've looked at fallen human desire. We've looked at what's happened to marriage, we've done all these things, but we have to start deliverance to get to the really practical things and that's what I did in the catechism and there is good news for you, really good news for you. The Lord wants you to know the good news. The Lord wants you to understand the good news that through his work a very basic thesis for tonight's sermon, he has shattered the dominion of sexual sin in your life.
Now our responsibility is to set our minds to understand that and to understand what Christ has done in the gospel and then to apply ourselves with the mind of Christ as we have learned Christ, Ephesians 4, to put to death these things in our lives. Remember, the two twin sins that got Israel in trouble in the wilderness were what? I hope I've said it enough now that we know it was idolatry and it was sexual morality, and by the way, I've said this before too, those are the only two sins in the New Testament. He says, "Don't stay around and flirt with those things or fight those things. You'll run the opposite way as fast as you can. Flee them, flee idolatry, flee sexual morality. Run away from them because we have a whole history of Israel to show what happened in those two twin sins.
Well, there's three short points that I'm making tonight propositionally, but to help us understand here, a great goal that I have here tonight to help is to think first about what the gospel has accomplished in setting you free from all forms of sexual immorality and the way to combat all that is coming at you. That's what we're looking at tonight first is how we think, how we think, how we think.
This comes down to a question here that I wrote down in the third part of the catechism. What has Christ accomplished for me in the gospel with regard to all forms of sexual sin? In other words, the gospel's been preached to you, the gospel has been made known to you, the gospel has been heralded to you, and what has the gospel said to you repeatedly? What have pastors said to you who are preaching the gospel all through your history faithfully? What have they said repeatedly to you about the issue of sin and the issue of redemption and freedom? Well, it comes with this kind of question. Is the forgiveness of sins, remember, I'm going after how we think first. Is the forgiveness of sins contingent upon you first putting to death all sin in your life? That's a challenging question, isn't it? What do I mean by that? In other words, does God say to you first come clean up your life, come put to death everything in your life and then my blood will cover you? Is that the gospel we've preached to you?
Now we're going to talk about repentance. Don't worry, there's initial repentance and turning to Christ. But what I'm asking is is God demanding perfection first? Is God demanding absolute perfection after? Well, yeah, God demands perfection, but I want to address that issue real quick. I remember years ago a Mormon writing into AGR and I've quoted this numerous times, but it so affected me over the years, I want to read it again and I think he captured the issue when he wrote in up in BC and he said, "I've been on a leave of absence from a law firm in BC when on the holidays a bus driver spoke with me about the real meaning of Christmas and among several things suggests that I listen to AGR. I started visiting a Christian Church in my neighborhood and exploring what a real walk with God could entail.
Yesterday with two of the pastors at the church, I received Christ. I wanted to thank you for the role the program has played in making a decision. I had never before thought that one could be a Christian and receive salvation without first being well on the way to perfection. Mormons call it the perfecting of the saints. I had never before realized that one can come to Christ broken and that there's nothing we can do to be worthy of grace. That's probably the most meaningful letter I'll probably ever get. That's remarkable. Think about that. I never knew practicing a religion all my life, false religion, nonetheless I'm not sure it's always clear in the Christian Church, I never knew that there's nothing we can do to be worthy of God's grace. That's really important.
The way the gospel comes to us is that by faith in the promises and turning from ourselves and looking to Christ, receiving Christ, trusting in Christ, turning away from ourselves and looking to Him, God freely grants and God freely credits the forgiveness of all our sexual trespasses. He's canceled your guilt and He has merited for you eternal righteousness and salvation. Now, do you understand the importance of that tonight, this basic truth of the gospel? Listen to Colossians 2 for a minute how Paul spoke to the people in that day who were struggling. And you who were dead in your trespasses, in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame triumphing over them in Him.
So he made you alive in regeneration. He forgave all your trespasses. Sure, that's true in time. God justifies us and we believe the gospel. He acquits us, but that's not really what He's focusing on in Colossians 2 totally. He says He forgave all your trespasses. When? When? When did he cancel the record of debt that you accumulated, that the law required payment for you? When? When did He do that? When He nailed it to the cross? He wants you to think objectively for a moment. Sure, there's a subjective aspect to this. I'm not discounting that. I'll talk about that in the end. What I mean is what he's saying here is that at the cross, Jesus Christ took my sins and He nailed them all there and He forgave right then and there all my sins, past, present, and future. That's the thrust of Romans 6.
You'll see why this is important in a minute because what is the devil trying to do with sin in general and then more specifically in this arena of sexual sin, bring back your debt and if you live in that cycle and you're constantly thinking I'm now back under the law and God hates me and I can't do enough, you'll never make progress in this. What is Romans 6 saying to us? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized where? Into his death. We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life for if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like his.
We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that with Him, when he did this, 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. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died to sin once for all but the life He lives, He lives to God. So you must also learn to reckon, that's the same word and justification, reckon to yourselves that you're dead to sin but alive to God in Christ. There's a full bunch of heiress tenses here and what the author is doing, what Paul's doing here is saying, "I want you to think objectively about what happened to you when Christ died and when he went into the grave and when he rose again, you died. You were buried and you rose with Him and all your sins were paid for."
That's really good news. That is the best news. That's the first way to overcome sexual sin. That's the first way in how we think, learning to reckon that to ourselves. I died when He died. I went into the grave, my old man, when He went into the grave. When He rose, I rose. There's no progress in really appreciating this until you first appreciate a truth which seems counterintuitive, that counterintuitive truth. Think about it for a minute. What is the truth? We naturally think what the Mormon thought. I got to first be perfect. Well, that's what Moralists will tell you. That's what Legalists will tell you.
He wants us to understand, and this is for our young people tonight, and this is so refreshing when you get this, that when we come to Christ and we embrace Christ by faith, he wants you to know all the condemnation has been taken away and that when you look at Christ and you study His life and death and resurrection, all your sins were dealt with objectively there and that compels us and that inspires us to now see ourselves differently. You see how important this would be in this regard? Contrary to this, the devil wants you to think you sin, God doesn't love you anymore.
The devil wants you to think you dog, you're dirty, you're filthy. God can't love someone like you. See the rollercoaster of this and people who live like that live on a terrible rollercoaster. That's not how He's telling us to live. That's not how He's telling us to think. There's no power in that. You never were worthy to begin with. You see, the devil says you're just too dirty, you're defiled. When you come, picture this, the prodigal, what did the father do when the prodigal came home? Well, I don't know. Throw a robe on him. Kill the fatted calf. My son has come home.
When we were doing this conference for the URCNA Missions Conference and Craig Troxell was giving a wonderful talk and then the question and answer time, this issue came up of young men struggling with sexual sin and pornography and he said, "Don't ever be angry at your child when he is sorrowful for his sin. Throw the robe on him. Throw the robe on him in whatever form." Well, that's what Romans 6 is helping us to understand. I nailed it to the cross for you, your sin's dealt with. You might say, "Well, why am I still struggling then? Why am I still in this fight then?" That's a good thing. That's a healthy thing. The bad thing would be to be out of the fight. Power comes through believing and receiving good news.
The Lord has good news for you here too in that question tonight. He has shattered the dominion of sin in your life. That's what the objective work of Christ has done. He brought you out of the old Adam and brought you into the new, the last Adam. He puts you in the right Adam. That's what the work has done. There's a transfer of status and claim now, and Romans 6 is speaking to us that way as being... Remember when he said, "You're not now... Notice the status change. You're not under the law for condemnation. You're under grace and freedom."
Paul says that here and so he says, "Since Christ died for you, you died", and now he's describing the principle of grace reigning in your life. So notice what the life of grace is. What he links that with, sin no longer has dominion over you. Well, that's the greatest encouragement. Should be. He's not saying try really hard to make sure now that sin is no longer mastering or has dominion over you. No, that's over, He says. That's mastery or dominion he's talking about there. And a good example of this is I still use it, but years ago I went to the Modesto Rescue mission. I preached the gospel there and I said to them who had never heard the gospel and who had not really believed the gospel, "How many of you want to be free from your addictions and your sins?" And every single hand went up in the Modesto rescue mission. I mean I almost lost it in tears, but they were under dominion. They were mastered by it.
Well, he says here, you're not under the law having been set free, that grace now reigns in your life. He's been telling us the whole time in Romans 6 that you're no longer your own. That's a crucial principle for the Christian life that what has happened to the Christian is the dominion of sin has been shattered. So you've experienced, you've known this. That's why you're here. Nobody who this hasn't happened to cares. When you sin under the law, what happens to condemnation? If your conscience has anything left, that's a seared conscience. What the apostle Paul wants you to realize here under the inspiration of the spirit is the power to condemn you is over. That leads to Romans 8. There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. So in chapter five he says, "We were saved from wrath through him", and anticipating Romans 8, there's no condemnation now. The power of sin has been abolished. The dominion of sin has been abolished through the cross in your life.
And you say, "Well, okay, okay, but I still have the ongoing struggle", and that's what Paul's addressing here in the rest of Romans 6. Yes, the presence still remains. The dominion shattered, the presence remains. That's Owen talked about this in his great work where he said it's still acting and laboring to bring forth the deeds of the flesh. The dominion of sin's been broken through the cross and no longer has a reign in the life of the believer. Now it's the struggle due to the presence of sin in your lives and that's sanctification. The controlling power or force is now ineffective. So this is what the beautiful truth of Romans 6 is saying tonight. It's saying this to you to encourage those struggling in this warfare, which is what it is, and this takes the form of any sin in life.
You're free. Act like it, believe it, reckon that to yourselves. Don't let sin reign in your mortal bodies now that you should obey it, you see, in its lusts and do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead. That's what Christ has done for you. He's raised you, He's got to claim on you. He bought. You see. The old man is dead in trespasses and sins. The new man is alive from the dead unto righteousness. So what's the way forward in the struggle? Well, the first is, and I've rehearsed this is tonight to believe in the forgiveness of sins, to trust the promises. The second is to know that you've been set free from its dominion by the blood of Christ and finally that you have this new identity and that that means now that all forms of sexual morality in life are incompatible with who you are. It's incompatible with who you are.
God is realistic about this struggle, beloved. When Paul says in Ephesians 4, "I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking, they're darkened in their understanding separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that's in them." That's everything that's being pushed. These are the people pushing this right now. They're in darkness. The conscience is seared and he says that's in them due to the hardening of their hearts, having lost all sensitivity. You're struggling because you're sensitive.
They have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity and they celebrate it and they demand you bow to it, but you've not learned Christ that way. He knows the struggle's real for you. He's not saying it's now gone away at all. I mean completely, but he wants you to think about who you are and what you've learned and the gospel that's been taught to you. He recognizes the ongoing struggle. He wants you to struggle against what you used to do when you didn't care, when you had a seared conscience. As new creatures, sexual sin doesn't define us. It doesn't define us. I mean, what a terrible thing in our society that they're saying sexual sin defines them. Every kind of perversity under the sun defines them as people. Is that a solution?
Well, that's why they're mad at us because they hear Christians saying and attacking who they are and we're saying that doesn't give you an identity. Your identity is not bound up in perversion of God's good order. The wonderful truth of Christianity is while all these people are searching for identity, think about this, all these people are searching for identity, the wonderful news of Christianity is Christ gives you his. Christ gives you his in true righteousness and holiness and that's what he wants us in sanctification to learn to appreciate and to love and to pursue. Yeah, it's radically countercultural that He loved me so much that He adopted me as a child of God and calls me a son. What's that worth? The blood of Christ.
He wants me to live knowing that that love is so great that he desires that I enjoy, this is what we've got to get to, enjoy and value my status that I am, as I put down in the catechism, protected and loved and cared for. Everything the world's looking for in an identity, you've got the most important identity in union with Christ. That He gives us living water, dear woman at the well, right, after trying marriage and then adultery and giving it up on it all until you believe that he has put his claim on you. I think sometimes this is why I love baptism, what it declares. It declares that Christ marked you as His. It's not well, let's falter between two opinions here. I'm going to go off to college and then decide whether I should serve bail or serve... No, he purchased you. You're a really blessed person. He bought you with his blood. He put to an end your old man. He raised you brand new and He's recreating you in the true image that matters.
That doesn't put me in limbo as a child of God when I sin. It trains me to think and value who I am. And when I know that I'm a new creation and that I've been forgiven and that I'm set free in that identity, then I'm going to want to pursue what is good and right because how could I sin against a God who's loved me like that? You have to preach. If you're saying, "Well, I still struggle. I seem to not find power in the moment." Well then here's what you need to do in any sin. You got to get up every morning and you got to frame your mind and you got to preach the gospel to yourself Lord's day one, I am no longer my own. I was bought with a price. I belong in life and in death to my faithful savior, Jesus Christ who purchased me, who set me free from the tyranny of the devil, and he watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven.
When you preach the gospel to yourself, you'll find the power to put to death sin in your life. He loved me. He gave Himself for me. I'm a temple of the Holy Spirit therefore, I want to honor him with my body. Will you sin? Of course along the way. We're not perfectionists. And when you sin, what do you do? You get up and you go to the Lord and you confess your sins, and what does the Lord say? He is faithful and just to forgive your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. He not only forgives you, but He cleanses you because He knows that the devil has come along and says, "Your putrid, you're foul." And the Lord washes you by His Word, and that's the evidence that you're being refined. But his calling is for us in this life to flee sexual morality, believing there's power given to us and that Christ becomes more attractive than serving the lusts of our flesh.
God has the power to do this, not you. Make that clear. God has the power. As we trust him that his steadfast love will endure forever and that He has given us everything necessary for a life, for godliness and the Christian walk where real power is given to us to no longer walk after the flesh, but after the spirit in the image of His Son. So when we're tempted to sin, from the outside or from the end, we always go back to this truth. I am no longer my own. I am bought, I am loved, and He will always be faithful to His promise to forgive us and to help us and to renew us. That's what every Lord's day Sabbath is about, beloved, that's why we're here, and to help you in the struggle for as Romans 8 says, "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you'll live, He's given you his Holy Spirit. He will not abandon his flock."
So be encouraged today in the struggle and look to the Lord. He has more than abundant resource to help you and encourage you, and it begins with how you think, believing in receiving the forgiveness and the righteousness that Christ has achieved for you through his life, death and resurrection.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for helping us tonight and for encouraging us in this struggle and we pray, oh Lord, that you would give us great help and deliverance and that you would help, Lord, all of us, to lead lives now as those who've been set free and as those who are no longer slaves to sin since that dominion has been shattered, but are slaves to righteousness. Help us to reckon ourselves to ourselves, to think this way. We are dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus, our Lord who loved us and gave Himself for us, that we might live in the joy of this comfort and find an identity in Him. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
