Here is the truth: You don’t have to sin anymore! You are no longer a slave to sin as a ruler, but you are a slave to Christ and His grace. You have a choice and a power that you never had. You have been made right because of Christ, and you can use each day for His glory, others’ good, and your growth!

I was once discipling a man who had come to Christ years earlier but had never realized all that had happened to him. Each week he became more excited as he discovered what God had done for him. He told me, “I feel like I received a glorious present years ago, but I am just now unwrapping it!”

If God’s grace has saved you through trust in Him, several astounding, eternal changes have occurred.

A New Position

Your spiritual position before God has forever changed. You were once sinful, condemned, and cut off from the presence of God. You couldn’t do what God desired because you were separated from Him. You were enslaved to sin as a ruling principle.

Now, as Romans 5 describes, you have peace facing God! You can stand in His throne room anytime and are invited there because of the introduction you’ve received through Christ by faith. You now stand in a state of grace, forgiven, uncondemned, and welcomed!

A New Man

But there is more. If you are in Christ, the old man you once were has died. Paul describes this “old man” in Romans 6. Think of the word translated “baptism” in these verses in its original meaning: immersion.

Therefore, we have been buried with Him through baptism (immersion) into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with (literally, rendered powerless), so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. (Romans 6:4–7).

When Christ died on the cross, who you were in your sins was joined to Him. He stood before God on the cross and bore the penalty you should have endured, the righteous judgment of God against sin. This penalty was separation from God and is heard in Christ’s cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” The One who had forever been with God was separated because of our sin.

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