April 9

1 Corinthians 10:5-6 (NIV)
5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert. 6 Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.

I hope that you, like me, are thoroughly convinced that the sacrifice and blood of Jesus our complete Savior has completely removed our sins of past, present and future – forever! So the verse in Romans, “the wages of sin is death…” would not apply, in context, to my life since I am IN Christ. However, that doesn’t mean the sin doesn’t bring death. Here we see a very sobering concept that is brought right into the New Covenant. We cannot go on sinning and expect for death to stay far from our lives. Let me give you an example.

If a spouse commits adultery there is a lot of death that will follow. There will be a death (even if the marriage is resurrected) to the marital relationship, there will be a death between the children and the offending spouse, there will be a death to the ministry of the offending spouse and finally there will be a death that happens in the soul of the offender. Sin equals death and we see that in the example of the children of Israel. We cannot go on sinning and think that death will not creep in to those areas and then quickly spread throughout our lives. One of my observations is that some of the “lesser” sins caused the death of thousands. Slander and grumbling topped the list on sins that cost the people dearly. Beloved, we need not be afraid to lose our salvation, but we should fear God because He taught us that these things bring death – He paid dearly for our life – to have life – more abundant life – choose life!