Back to Work!

Holiday season 2008 came and went faster than any I can remember. Where does the time go? Seems like just yesterday I was looking forward to two weeks off of work when actually yesterday I was taking down Christmas lights and getting ready to go back to work. The McClain family had yet another memorable Christmas with lots of food, lots of presents and lots of quality time together.

As the new year so unstoppably engulfs us I find myself wondering what it will bring. So much can change in a year's time. A year ago today I did not know that my Grandmother would die of cancer. A year ago today I did not know that my brother and his wife would be expecting a third child. A year ago today I did not know that I would be changing positions at work. A year ago today I did not know that we would elect Barack Obama to be the next president. A year ago today I did not know the Houston area would be hit with a devestating hurricane. Things change at an ever increasing rate in this age of information. News becomes history extremely quickly and time is certainly not on our side.

With that in mind I cracked open a daily devotional book last night that my dad gave me, along with a new Bible, for Christmas. The devotional is based on the one year Bible, yesterday was January fourth, so naturally it was the fourth time I had opened it. The passage in scripture was Romans 6:15-23; not a new passage to me, in fact, I've read it many times. This particular time it really grabbed my attention. Maybe it was the new year, the thoughts in my mind, or more likely God rewarding me with a little clarity for spending time in His word. Paul, one of the most inspirational men of all time and a super-dedicated follower of Christ, shares his Godly view of slavery.

15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
19I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. 20When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in[b] Christ Jesus our Lord.

The first thought I had after reading this passage was that while I am free from the eternal consequences of sin it still infects my human body on earth. To become a slave to righteousness I need to offer myself as such, just as Paul points out in the passage. I will still fall to sin because ultimately I am weak on earth but each time I am obedient I will become more and more in the control of righteousness. In other words, God will change my way of thinking from one of wickedness to one of righteousness. My desires will change and sin will cease to have a stranglehold on my life because I am no longer a slave to it. I am sin's borrowed prey but God is my ultimate predator.

I hope that a year from now when I look back on 2009 I will be able to say this was the year when I became a slave to righteousness.