1-5-2014

Good Morning to All,

    Galatians 6:8; “For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”

     Throughout history, there have been many imaginative (and somewhat disgusting) methods of exacting capital punishment.  Some were relatively quick and easy.  They would behead the murderer.  They might use something called “draw and quarter”.  This was kind of nasty.  They would cut you open and remove your stomach and intestines (that’s the draw) then they would attach each arm and each leg to four different horses and then have them run in different directions (that’s the quarter).  The one that I found most unique was for the murder victim’s body to be tied to the back of the murderer.

    The murderer would walk around with the weight of the victim on his back.  Everyone would see that you murdered this poor person.  It wouldn’t take long for the stench of the decaying body to be overpowering and no one would come anywhere near to the convicted murderer.  Eventually, the decaying body, with the accompanying maggots would cause an infection in the body of the murderer who would then die a rather unpleasant death.

    I hope you don’t read this with breakfast but this is very much like our sinful life.  We carry the decaying body of our sin on our back.  Between the stench and the decay, it is a miserable and wretched existence.  In the end we suffer, horrendously, and then die because of the decay and corruption of the body of sin on our back.  Not a pleasant thought but accurate.  Sin destroys us in this fashion.  It is a disgusting horrible life to live and the devil tries to extract every ounce of discomfort, sadness and pain that he can.  His only goal is to make us miserable. 

    Yet this is what God does for us.  He cuts the ties which keep the body of sin attached to us.  Jesus does this through the atonement on the cross.  So what Jesus also does for us is to change our desire to sin; that’s the sow to flesh part; to our desire to live according to his will; that is the sow to the Spirit part.  That is what faith does for us; it changes our desire from sin to salvation.

    The Spirit instills in us the desire to follow God’s will.  Yet our sinful nature will get in the way sometimes.  Yet we know that God forgives our sins and helps us to get up and go again.  He continually cuts the ties of the body of sin that attempts to attach itself to us.  He does this through the renewing Spirit that we receive through our Baptism.  He does this out of love.  So we are given new life; a new life that is not built on the corpse of sin but rather is built upon the grace of God and the promise of salvation.  We will battle that corpse of sin, sometimes it will succeed in drawing us down, but God’s grace will pull us out and by faith we will persevere.

Gracious Father, through your mercy we lose our corpse of sin.  Give us the comfort to know that it will never destroy us.  Keep us in your loving arms.  Be with those who are especially weighed down at this time.  Help them to feel the cords cut and the freeing of their spirit by you.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret