Everyone who becomes a Christian is guaranteed an eternity in heaven. One of the most common struggles we have as Christians is balancing our guarantee of salvation with our calling to live holy lives free of sin. Christians have always been tempted to casually accept some sins because we know we have already been forgiven of them.

Paul told the church in Rome, and every Christian who reads his words, that we must consider ourselves “dead to sin.” In other words, we must see our faith and God’s Holy Spirit as the power we need to resist the temptation to sin. God didn’t guarantee our salvation so that we could live unconcerned about our sins, as if they didn’t matter. Instead, Paul said we needed to remember that we are now “alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

Blaise Pascal was a child prodigy who became a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic author. He was the inventor of what we now know as the mechanical calculator. 

Physically, Pascal struggled with frailty and illness. Spiritually, he had the strength only God could provide. He was a brilliant mind and wrote this in Pensées: “There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.” 

All of us have personal sins we likely repeat because deep down we just don’t think of them as being all that sinful. A lot of personal sins are committed by Christians who don’t realize that all sin has consequences in the lives of others. 

Words muttered in private are often uttered out loud later on.

Private sins often mean another human being, created by God, has been objectified.

Smaller sins often stretch the boundaries and allow us to tolerate sins with greater consequences.

Paul taught us to live and see ourselves as dead to sin. From the time we become Christians, we begin to put to death the sins that cost Jesus the cross. To live free from sins doesn’t mean we live without the consequences of our sins. Rather, it means we live without the eternal penalty of those sins.

The time we spend committing a sinful act is time we waste apart from God’s will. It is time spent without the eternal reward of refusing that sin. God would much rather reward our godly choice than forgive our choice to sin.

We are alive to God through Christ. We walk into each circumstance of our lives with God’s Presence within us. Setting aside a sin is much easier when we realize how much we don’t want to include Jesus in that sin. Max Lucado said it well in A Gentle Thunder: “To call yourself a child of God is one thing. To be called a child of God by those who watch your life is another thing altogether.” Who will be impacted by your witness tomorrow as they watch you, God’s child? 

Yielding to God’s wisdom is spiritual strength. Pray for the wisdom to live dead to sin and you will be able to walk confidently with Christ tomorrow.