A New Devotion - Plaid and Sin

Here's a new devotion that I wrote. You can find a recording of this devotion at the bottom of the page.

Romans 6:1-11

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Plaid and Sin

Back in the early ‘80s, Steve Martin starred in a movie call, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. It was a comedy tribute to all the film noir movies of the ‘40s and ‘50s. But I’ll tell you, it’s the basic assertion in the title that I find fascinating. And when you think about it, I guess it’s true; dead men don’t generally wear plaid. You see, even if they did, they probably left that aspect of life behind when they left this mortal toil.

But I’ll tell you, if we believe what Paul wrote to the Romans, there’s something else that dead men don’t do. You see, they don’t sin. In other words, dead men and women don’t run around sinning anymore. I guess you could say their sinning days are over. As a matter of fact, death may actually be seen as the way sin’s power is broken. And for Paul, that’s what makes the death of Jesus so important. You see, when he died on the cross, we died too. We were baptized into his death; therefore, with respect to sin, we are like dead men walking. And it’s power over us has been broken. Put another way, we’re no longer enslaved to sin; we are now free, free to live for God. Of course, that freedom means nothing unless we decide to use it, something we can do when we make the decision to love others rather than self.