Romans 6:2b – Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? (NLT)

At fifty years of age, there are many things I still don't understand any more than I did when I was younger. For example, a tornado rips through a heavily populated area, killing innocent people and instantly destroying possessions that people have worked all their lives to accumulate.

When my daughter was in high school, her track coach's daughter was tragically killed. She was riding her bike through a normally safe subdivision when a man driving a truck ran a stop sign and hit her. I recall walking through the receiving line at the funeral home and having her father tell me he just did not understand why this happened. I had no explanation for him.

Then there was the young couple who sporadically attended a church in the upstate of South Carolina. The wife and young child were in a neighbouring state visiting her family. While driving home, she swerved to miss a deer, ran off the road, and the child was killed. Wailing, numbness, and blank stares engulfed the funeral. I had no explanation for these parents either.

In Romans 6, Paul imagines someone proposing more sin so God's grace can be magnified. Though sin is senseless, it does produce a keener focus on God's goodness and grace. It is witnessed in the Christian friends comforting the parents who have lost a child. It is seen in the cheque that arrives in the mail addressed to a family who didn't know how the rent was going to be paid.

As God has dealt me the hand of kindness and forgiveness, it is my responsibility to deal others the same hand. In doing so, I become a channel of God's grace and help overturn the senselessness of sin.

Prayer: Rather than looking for an explanation for what seems senseless, enable us, Lord, to use it as an opportunity to bathe in Your grace. Amen.

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About the author:

Martin Wiles <mandmwiles@gmail.com>
Greenwood, South Carolina, USA
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