December 1

Today’s reading was a long one. There is so much there and I thank God for this book! The thing that stuck out to me was a recurring theme that ran throughout chapters 5-7 and really the whole book. Clearly we are not our own. Clearly we are to sacrifice ourselves for our brothers and for Christ. How? Verse 7 of chapter 5 tells us:

“Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed…”

This is an incredible instruction to me. It capsulates, in the middle of talking about someone who is have sex with his step-mother and what to do with him, God’s thinking about our born again state. I am supposed to get rid of the old yeast (works of the law, works of the flesh-worldliness) so I CAN be a new batch of bread without yeast (yeast representing sin). So I have to get rid of the stuff (yeast) that is messing me up and making my flesh (sin nature) rise. However the next half of the verse tells me that I AM ALREADY A NEW BATCH! God has already created me new! Not only does that tell me that I don’t ‘have to’ sin, it tells me that I am not created to sin – it is AGAINST my nature! Get that in me Papa! I am able to get rid of the old yeast BECAUSE Christ has been sacrificed and because I have accepted HIS life (and death) and become NEW. It is my nature to get rid of the old yeast – that is what I do! When I start thinking like this, it becomes a whole lot easier than the thinking; “I am just so caught in my past – or – I have always been like that”. I am a NEW MAN!