Freedom

Date: Friday, September 25, 2026

Paul asks the question every honest Christian eventually wrestles with: if grace covers sin, why not just keep living large and selfishly and let grace do its thing? His answer is a eulogy. In baptism, Paul says, we were plunged into Christ’s death and raised into His new life. The old self (the one enslaved to sin) got crucified. Dead. Gone. This is Exodus logic turned up to maximum volume: Israel didn’t get a self-help seminar in Egypt, they got a Red Sea. God has always freed His people by taking them through death into new life, not by coaching them into better behavior.

Consider John Newton, slave-ship captain, hardened cynic. A man who trafficked in human misery. A near-death storm at sea cracked something open, and over years grace remade him from the inside out, until the former trader in chains became a pastor writing “Amazing Grace” and campaigning to abolish the very slave trade that made him a fortune. That’s Romans 6 with a face on it: a genuinely new identity, slave to sin traded for servant of righteousness.

You don’t have to muscle up and try harder today. You’ve already been buried and raised. Just live like it. And when you do fall down, get up, dust yourself off, and move on in the victory that Jesus has given you.

Devotional Prompts:

Where in your life are you still living like sin’s slave, even though Christ has already set you free?
Newton’s transformation unfolded over decades. What does that teach you about the patience of grace in your own story?
What would it look like this week to “consider yourself dead to sin” rather than just try harder?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank You for burying my old self with You and raising me to walk in newness of life. When I forget who I am and reach for old chains, remind me I’m already free. Amen.