We crave freedom, but Bob Dylan was right when he sang, “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” No matter how strong that craving, we’ll find ourselves serving either righteousness or unrighteousness.
When the old broken software finally gives way to something that works, the last thing you'd do is press every button just to break the new one on purpose. Yet that same impulse faces us in the Christian life, and Paul confronts it head-on in Romans 6:14-15: since we are not under law but under grace, shall we sin?
Even good things we pursue can drift from their real meaning into empty gestures that change nothing. Sin whispers the same trade—“focus on me and I’ll give you what you want”—yet Paul answers it in Romans 6: do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires, but present yourselves to God as those brought from death to life.
We think, “If only I had enough money, my life would change forever,” yet even a life-altering jackpot can't easily eliminate the old self. Romans 6:10 tells us the death Christ died, He died to sin once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God.
We long for fresh starts, yet even after coming to Christ we can feel the pull to return to the same old sins and familiar ways. Romans 6:6–9 says our old self was crucified with Christ and that death no longer rules him—so what does that new standing mean for believers still facing temptation, failure, and the daily work of living for him?
A voyage to the moon can feel finished once splashdown comes and the pictures stop, yet those who flew it insist it is only the start. Romans 6 challenges us to see the same of Easter: we're not at the end of our old debt, but the beginning of our new life in Jesus.
We are right to realize we can’t do it all and that we need God’s Word to guide us. But if in our pursuit of doing things right before God, we miss Him, what have we accomplished?
The wicked bend their bows, the foundations feel destroyed, and everyone around David has a reasonable-sounding answer: flee. Psalm 11 plants its feet against that pressure, asking whether the upheaval surrounding the righteous actually means what it looks like it means.
It’s easy to be busy with the Christian life—programs, good intentions, real effort—and still be missing the one thing that keeps it all from exploding. In Ephesians 1:15–16, Paul looks at believers whose faith in Jesus is visibly pouring out as love toward one another, and what he does in response is the piece we most often skip.
