I really enjoyed hiking in the mountains. There is a satisfaction laboring up a mountain to the top and then being able to see the beautiful vistas. In a sense, that is what has happened to us during our study of Romans. For more than five and a half chapters we have been laboring up the majestic mountain of doctrine concerning what God has done for us in salvation. Now, for the very first time, we have passed over the highest ridge to verses that tell what we are to do in response to God’s action. To put in other words, after many detailed studies, our tour has at last enabled us to cross from the high doctrine of justification-by-grace-through-faith to the doctrine of sanctification.

Since this is the first direct teaching about sanctification in Romans, it’s important that we understand what is being said. To do that, we need to look at this passage as a whole to see what principles about sanctification are taught. Then we need to apply those teachings in the most practical terms possible.

The principles are: (1) Sin is not dead in Christians, even in the most mature and pious Christians, but rather is something always to be struggled against. We have already said this in a variety of ways in our previous studies. (2) Sin’s hold on us is in or through our bodies. We cannot miss noticing how directly, literally, and strongly Paul emphasizes our actual physical bodies in these verses. In verse 12 he refers to our “mortal body,” that is, the body of our flesh that is dying. In verse 13 he twice refers to “the parts of” our bodies, that is, to our hands, feet, eyes, tongues and so forth. It is through these physical parts of our bodies that sin operates and through which it maintains its strong hold on us. (3) Sin can reign in or dominate our bodies. It cannot dominate or destroy that new person that I have become in Christ. That new “me” will always abhor sin and yearn for righteousness – and it will have it, because God is determined to produce the holy character of Christ is His people. But sin can certainly dominate my body. I can become a slave to its cravings. (4) Although sin can reign in or dominate our bodies, it does not need to. In other words, although it is possible for us to “offer the parts of [our] body to sin, as instruments of wickedness,” we do not need to do this. On the contrary, being now joined to Jesus Christ, we have His new life within and His power available to us. (5) This leads to the last and positive truth: As Christians, we can now offer the parts of our bodies to God as instruments of righteousness. This is the thrust of the passage. It is what Paul is urging on us.

There are many ways to approach the subject of sanctification. Paul himself does it in several ways. But I don’t know a more practical, balanced, or down-to-earth way of speaking about how to live a holy life or grow in righteousness than the way in which Paul does it here. He has given us one easy-to-grasp principle in verse 11: “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Now he tells us how to give practical expression to that great principle. It is by what we do with our bodies. What does that mean? The answers come by considering the body’s parts and their potential for doing both good and evil.

The first body part Paul mentions is the mind. If you fill your mind with products of our secular culture, you will remain secular and sinful. On the other hand, if you feed your mind on the Bible and Christian publications, train it by godly conversation, and discipline it to critique what you see and hear elsewhere by applying biblical truths to those ideas, you will grow in godliness and become increasingly useful to God. Your mind will become an instrument for righteousness. The mind is not the only part of our bodies through which we receive ideas and impressions and which must therefore be offered to God as an instrument of righteousness. We also receive impressions through our eyes and ears. These too, must be surrendered to God. The tongue is also part of the body, and what we do with it is important. James, the Lord’s brother, must have thought about this a great deal, because he says more about the tongue and its power for either good or evil than any other writer of Scripture (see James 3:5-6). Our hands and feet determine what we do and where we go. So when we are considering how we might offer the parts of our body to God as instruments of righteousness, let’s not forget them. Paul writes of using our hands profitably so we might be self-supporting and not dependant on anybody (1 Thes. 4:11-12). What about our feet? Where do your feet take you? Paul writes in Romans 10:14-15 “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

What we are actually engaged in is spiritual warfare, an ongoing battle against sin, for our own growth in grace and for the good of others. And, like all soldiers who are facing some great conflict, we are to train ourselves physically and steel our wills for the enterprise. Paul thought in these terms, sometimes speaking of a warfare in which the followers of Christ are to cloth themselves with God’s armor (Eph. 6:10-18), sometimes speaking of a race. “Fight the good fight of the faith…” he says in 1Timothy 6:12. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith,” he says in 2 Timothy 4:7.

You have been waiting through five and a half chapters of Romans for something to do. Now you have that something. You know what it is. So do it. “Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of righteousness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness.” Why should you submit to such rigorous training? It’s not because you are driven to do it. It’s because you have been liberated from sin by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and want to do it. You want to live for Him. This is why Paul ends by saying, “For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace” (v. 14).

Romans 6:12-14 Reflection Questions:

How can you improve on the use of the parts of your body to glorify God?

How is presenting or offering your limbs and organs to God different from presenting them to sin (v. 13)?

It’s a sad fact that many people perceive Christianity as being negative. It’s viewed as a series of don’ts. It is possible that some reader has taken our first studies of Romans 6 negatively, because the emphasis has been on the fact that once a person has been joined to Jesus Christ he or she can no longer go on sinning (vv. 1-2). Death and dying does sound negative, particularly to the non-Christian. If you do not know Christianity better than that, it sounds almost like “no more anything.” But that is not what real Christianity is, of course. In fact, it is just the opposite. It is sin that is negative. So to be freed from sin is to be freed to a brand new life, which is positive. As the believer identifies with Christ in His death he enters into newness of life. For the Christian, death is followed by a resurrection. And not just at the end of time! True Christianity is living out a new, joyful, abundant, resurrected life with Jesus Christ now.

In verse 5 Paul states a thesis which verses 6-10 develop. It has two parts: the first part is; “If we have been united with Him like this in His death…” and the second part is; “…we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection.” Paul unfolds the first part in verses 6-7 and he explains the second part in verses 8-10. When Paul unfolds the meaning of the first part in verses 6-7, he isn’t just repeating himself. This is the point at which he is starting to talk about the Christian life, particularly the Christian’s sure victory over sin. Now when he mentions our union with Christ in His death, it is to show this frees us from sin’s tyranny.

The second half of Paul’s topical sentence in verse 5 is explained in verses 8-10, where Paul speaks of a present resurrection. Unless we take these verses together we will perceive the words “we will also live with Him” as referring to our future resurrection, when actually they refer to an experience of resurrection life here and now. Don’t misunderstand. There is a future resurrection, and the same union of the believer with Christ that we have been talking about is a guarantee of it. But that is not what these verses are about.

We have already seen in the case of Christ (Rom. 6:2). They refer to His passage from the sphere where death reigned to the sphere of the resurrection, from where He was to where He is now. In the same way, they refer to our passage – from the reign of death to the reign of grace, to a present resurrection. This is what Paul says of himself in Philippians 3:10. He means that he wants to be victorious over sin. Anyone who has been united to Christ has died to sin, is on the way to God, and can never return to his or her former sphere of existence.

Verse 11 is an exhortation, and it’s the first in the epistle. This is the first time in five and a half chapters that the apostle has urged his readers to do anything. What are they to do? The text says  “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” With today’s “quick fix” offerings we may be wondering why Paul waited until the sixth chapter for the first exhortation. Was Paul not interested in the spiritual growth of the Roman Christians? Of course, he was. But he knew that there was no use rushing ahead to tell them how to live the Christian life until he had first fully instructed them on what God had done for them in Jesus Christ. This is because the work of God in Christ is foundational to everything else about Christianity. Paul wanted us to learn that, we have no more joined ourselves to Jesus in His resurrection than we have died for our own sins. If we are Christians, everything that is necessary has been done for us by God.

In verse 11 Paul says there are two things God has done that we are to count on. First, that we are dead to sin if we are Christians. It doesn’t mean that we are immune to sin or temptation. It doesn’t mean that we will not sin. It means that we are dead to the old life and cannot go back to it. The second reality Paul says we are to count on is that we are now “alive to God in Christ Jesus.” This statement completes the parallel to verse 5, in which Paul said, “If we have been united with Him in His resurrection.” It explains how the earlier verse is to be taken; that we are to experience Christ’s resurrection life now. That is exactly where verse 11 has brought us. It tells us that just as we have died to sin (and must count on it), so also have we been made alive to God in Jesus Christ (and must count on that also). That is what has happened to you, if you are a Christian. You have been removed from your former state to another. Your job is to reckon it so, and to count on it.

Romans 6:5-11 Reflection Questions:

The word in verse 11 that is translated as “calculate” or “count” is a word that is used in bookkeeping, in calculating accounts, in working out profit and loss figures. What might be the purpose of Paul using this term in verse 11?

What does “being dead to your old life” mean to you?

As we begin Romans 6, we see at once that we are not entering upon a radically new section. This is because the chapter begins with a question that immediately turns us back to chapter 5. In one way or another, the entire sixth chapter is going to answer this question. Paul’s response, after he has asked the question is, “By no means!” (v.2). This expression has already occurred in a similar exchange in chapter 3, and it’s a powerful one. The Greek words literally mean “let it not be,” and they have the force of a powerful negation. They actually mean, “It is inconceivable for it to be thus” or “It is unthinkable,” – “It should not even be considered.” Some translators render the expression, “God forbid!”

By now you should be able to see that there is no possible alternative to God’s path, for those who are truly saved. The life of sin is what we have died to. There is no going back for us, any more than there could be a going back to suffer and die for sin again by our Lord. If there is no going back – if that possibility has been eliminated – there is no direction for us to go but forward! A holy life comes from knowing – I stress that word – knowing that you can’t go back, that you have died to sin and been made alive to God. The secret of sanctification is not some neat set of experiences or emotions, however meaningful or intense they may be. It is knowing what has happened to you.

What Paul says we are to know is in verses 3 and 4. But before we plunge into that we need to think about the meaning of the word baptism, since it is the key term he uses. We gain help from classical literature. The Greeks used the word baptizo from about 400 B.C. to about the second century after Christ, and in their literature baptizo always pointed to a change having taken place by some means. The main idea is that the act of “baptizing” produces a permanent change, not necessarily by immersion in water. Mark 16:16 is well known. Jesus says here: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved…” Scores of people have wrongly concluded from that verse that unless a person first believes in Christ and then is also immersed in water, he or she cannot be saved. But even the poorest Bible student knows that this is not true. A person is saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. If baptism in water is necessary for salvation, then the believing thief who was crucified with Christ is lost.

Once we get away from the mistaken idea that baptism always refers to water baptism, the verse becomes clear. For what Jesus is saying in Mark 16:16 is that a person needs to be identified with Him to be saved. He was saying that mere intellectual assent to the doctrines of Christianity is not enough. It is necessary, to use another of His teachings, that “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). This last verse is an exact parallel to what the apostle is teaching in Romans 6:3-4, for it means that a true follower of Christ has died to his past life – like a man on his way to execution. Only, in Romans 6, the man has already died and been buried (had permanently changed).It is that we have died to sin: “We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” Union with Christ! And death to sin!

This is what baptism signifies, and in that order. The most important idea is that we have been taken out of one state and put into another. We have had an experience similar to that of the Jews after they had been brought through the Red Sea. They were joined to Moses; we are joined to Christ. Or, to put in the words of Galatians 3:27, we have been clothed with Christ. We are in Christ’s uniform. And what that means, if we look backward, is that we have died to whatever has gone before. We died to the old life when Christ transferred us to the new one. As soon as we see how these ideas go together, we see why Paul’s thoughts turned to the word baptism as a way of unfolding what he had in mind when he said: “How can we live in [sin] any longer?”

When Paul refers to our being baptized into Christ, he is not thinking chiefly of the sacrament of baptism but rather of our having been joined to Christ by the Holy Spirit. The very next verses (vv. 5-7) prove this view, for in them Paul speaks explicitly of our being “united with Him in His death [and] resurrection.” This is something the Holy Spirit does. But while emphasizing this, I don’t want to miss the significance of the sacrament of baptism as a Christian’s public renunciation of his past life and a profession of his new identification with Christ.

This is not so obvious to us today perhaps, since baptism is something that generally takes place in an exclusively Christian environment and for many people means very little. But this was not so in Paul’s day. And it’s not so in many places in the world even today. In the ancient world, to be identified with Christ in baptism was a bold and risky declaration. It often put the believer’s in jeopardy. When a Christian was baptized, he was saying to the state as well as to his fellow believers that he was now a follower of Jesus Christ and that he was going to be loyal to Him regardless of the outcome. It meant “Christ before Caesar.”

Baptism was as nearly an irreversible step as a believer in Jesus Christ could take. Therefore, even though Paul is not thinking primarily about water baptism in Romans 6 – water baptism is something we do; the baptism Paul is talking about is something that has been done to us – the sacrament of baptism is nevertheless a fit public testimony to what baptism into Christ by the Holy Spirit means: that we have been united to Christ and that the old life is done for us forever. That is what you professed is you have been baptized, particularly if you have been baptized as an adult. You have told the world you are not going back, that you are going forward with Jesus.

I know there are questions on many people’s minds: “But what if I do go back? What if I do sin?” Here are three points to remember: (1) It won’t work. If you are a true Christian, you cannot return to sin in the same way you were in it previously. You can sin. We do sin. But it’s not the same. If anything else, you cannot enjoy sin as you did before, and you will not even be able to do it convincingly. (2) God will stop you. God will not stop you from sinning, but He will stop you from continuing in it, and He will do it in one of two ways. Either He will make your life so miserable that you will curse the day you got into sin and beg God to get you out of it, or God will put an end to your life. Paul told the Corinthians that because they had dishonored the Lord’s Supper, God had actually taken some of them to heaven (1 Cor. 11:30). If God did it to them for that offense, He will do it to you for persistence in more sinful things. (3) If you do return to the life you lived before coming to Christ and if you are able to continue in it, you are not saved. In fact, it’s even worse than that. If you are able to go back once you have come to Christ, it means, not only that you are not saved, but that you even have been inoculated against Christianity (see Heb. 6:4-6). Those verses in Hebrews are not referring to a true believer in Christ being lost – how could they in view of Paul’s teaching in Romans 5 and 8? – But rather of one who was close enough to have tasted the reality of Christ and who nevertheless turned back. It teaches that the closer you are to Christ, if you do go back, the harder it will be to come to Christ again. In some cases it will be impossible.

So don’t go back! If you have been saved by Jesus, you have been saved forever. There is nothing before you but to go on growing in righteousness!

Romans 6:1-4 Reflection Questions:

Where do you see echoes of the Exodus story in 6:1-5?

How does Paul proceed to answer the question he raises in 6:1?

What is Paul’s understanding of baptism in 6:1-5?

According to Paul’s argument in these first five verses, a believer has experienced a change of status. What is required of those with this new status?

In the previous study we have been studying the subject of God’s grace. In verse 18 Paul speaks “of one act of righteousness (God’s grace) was justification that brings life for all men.” This is what is called “justification by grace.” But I wonder if that sounds right to you. We already know about “justification by faith.” It was the rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther having said that it is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. But if that is so, why should we speak of justification by grace? The answer is that both statements are parts of the same truth, since the justification that is received by faith alone is also by grace alone. A full statement of the doctrine would be: “Justification by the grace of God alone, received through faith alone.” Justification is an act of God as judge by which He declares us to be in right standing before Him so far as His justice is concerned. We are not just in ourselves. So the only way by which we can be declared to be in a right standing before God is on the basis of the death of Jesus Christ for our sins, He bearing our punishment, and by the application of Christ’s righteousness to us by God’s grace. This grace is received through the channel of human faith, but it is nevertheless utterly grace.

This brings us to another important idea: the obedience of Jesus. Paul mentions this in verse 19, and it’s the first time he has used the word. In discussing the obedience of Christ, theologians usually distinguish between what is called the active obedience of Jesus and the passive obedience of Jesus. The active obedience of Jesus refers to His submission to and active conformity to the law of Moses. Do you remember how in Galatians 4:4-5 Jesus is described as having been “born under law, to redeem those under law?” This means that when Jesus became man He deliberately subjected Himself to the law of Moses, so that when He went to the cross to die for our sin, it might be known that He did so as a perfect sin-bearer, “a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:19). The passive obedience of Jesus Christ is something else. It refers to His submission to the cross. This is what Paul is referring to when he speaks of “the obedience of the one man” through which “the many will be made righteous.” Christ’s active obedience qualified Him for this role. But it was His one act of passive obedience, corresponding to Adam’s one act of disobedience that atoned for our sin and made it possible for the Father to credit Jesus’ righteousness to our account.

Let’s now explore Paul’s illustration of what grace is about and show that the drama of “God’s Grace” – Paul would call it “The Reign of Grace” – is as serious as it is real (vv. 20-21).The illustration Paul uses is of two rival kingdoms, and the way he gets into his illustration is by personifying the power of sin, on the one hand, and the power of grace, on the other. The one king’s name is Sin and his rule is death for all persons. The other king’s name is Grace and He has come to save us from sin and bring us into a realm of eternal happiness, eternal life.

This illustration tells us something about grace that we may not have considered. It tells us that grace is a power. We tend to think of grace as an attitude; and of course, it is that. But grace is more than an attitude. It is also a power that reaches out to save those who, apart from the power of grace, would perish. This means that grace is more than an offer of help. To use the illustration of the two rival kingdoms, it would be possible to say that grace is an invasion by a good and legitimate king of territory that has been usurped by another. The battle is not always visible, because this is a matter of spiritual and not physical warfare. But the attack is every bit as massive and decisive as the invasion of the beaches of Normandy by the Allied Forces at the turning point of the Second World War. The Allies threw their maximum combined weight into that encounter and won the day. In a similar way, God has thrown His weight behind grace, and grace will triumph.

What can we say about the nature of the reign of God’s grace? (1) Grace is bountiful. The first thing we can say is that the reign of grace is bountiful. This means that it is overflowing with benefits. Grace sees us staggering and comes alongside to help us and bear us up. Grace sees us destitute and pours the inexhaustible riches of Christ and the Father into our laps. Grace sees us dying and imparts eternal life. Grace says, “What do you need? Tell me. Tell me anything at all.” And then grace provides that need in accord with God’s perfect wisdom, invincible power, and ultimate supply. “Grace always gives, whereas sin always takes away.” (2) Grace is invincible. In this life it is not always true that the good triumph and the evil are defeated. Looking at this life, we might ask, “Can anything as good as grace really triumph in the end? To be sure, grace offers everything. But how can we know that in the end sin will not somehow still be there to assert its rule and snatch God’s bountiful gifts from our hands?”

Ah, but that would be possible only if we were speaking of grace in human terms. If it were only my grace or your grace that we are talking about, sin would snatch our gifts away. We could not stand against this powerful adversary. But it is not my grace or your grace that is reigning. It is the grace of God, and God is the Almighty One. Who or what can stand against God or His purposes (see Rom. 8:31-30)? We can be assured of salvation because, through Christ, we have gained permanent access by faith “into this grace in which we now stand” (Rom. 5:2). For the reign of grace there is no defeat, there can be no end. Let grace triumph in you. Yield to it. Yield to the grace of God in Christ. Open your arms to grace, and let grace draw you to the winning side.

Romans 5:18-21 Reflection Questions:

How do verses 18-21 summarize the entire letter of Romans so far?

The idea of a beautiful and good world, spoiled at one point in time by human rebellion, remains basic to all early Christian, as to all Jewish thought. The picture of humankind in a state of sin is indeed a sorry one. In what ways do verses 18-21 contradict the view of humanity that society today holds?

Think about an area of your life, your community or the world that demonstrates the brokenness of sin. What would that area look like if there was a “reign of grace” instead of a reign of death?

The paragraph to which we come now, Romans 5:15-17, is one in which Paul develops the differences between our being in Adam and our being in Christ. Paul’s point in verses 13 and 14 is that we were condemned by reason of our union with Adam, just as we have now been saved by virtue of our union with Jesus Christ. It is an important and great similarity. In verses 13 and 14 he has explained how we have “sinned in Adam.” In verses 15-17 he digresses further to explain how union with Christ is greater in its nature and effects than our original union with Adam. This study is called “Three Great Contrasts,” because of the way Paul sets out his contrasts in our verses we are studying here (vv. 15-17).

Of these three verses, the hardest to understand is verse 15, because it is least explicit. In what way is the gift of salvation in Christ not like the trespass? In what sense is the gift much more? Or, what particular contrast, the unique idea, that verse 15 introduces? The contrast is found in the first key word Paul uses, after having said that “the gift is not like the trespass.” It’s the word died. The sin of Adam brought death. It brought death to all. By contrast, the gift of God brought life to many. We must not be misled by the word “many.” When Paul writes of “the many” who died because of Adam’s transgression, he means just that: the many who died in Adam, that is, all persons. And when he writes of “the many” to whom the gift of life overflows, he also means many, for surely “many” are being saved. So what is the contrast? It’s between death, which has come upon all because of Adam, and life, which has been given to every believer in Christ.

Verse 16 carries the contrast between the effects of Adam’s sin and the effects of God’s work in Christ further, pointing out that “the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. It was hard for us to see the contrast in verse 15; however this is not true of verse 16. Here the contrast is found between the “one sin” that brought condemnation, that is, the sin of Adam in eating the forbidden tree, and the “many trespasses,” which Adam and all who followed him have committed but which are atoned for by the blood of Jesus Christ. Since Christ died for such a vast accumulation of sins, is it any wonder that Paul marvels in Romans 5 how “judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.”

The third and final great contrast is in verse 17. The key to understanding this verse is to emphasize the word abundant in the phrase “God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness,” and the thought that those who have been thus abundantly blessed are enabled to reign in life now through Jesus. To put it simply, the work of Christ in dying for us did not merely restore us to the position in which Adam stood before the fall, but rather carries us beyond that. So what does the phrase “reigning in life” refer to? It means that by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion and empowering of the Holy Spirit, we are victorious now. In this way, the gift of God in Christ far surpasses the effects of Adam’s and all other transgressions.

Now we must look at just one word: grace. “Grace” occurs five times in this passage, three times in verses 15-17, which we are particularly studying here, and twice more in verses 20 and 21. In these verses Paul says that grace is of God and that it comes to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s free, triumphant, and overflowing. What is grace? It’s God’s favor toward the undeserving. Grace lies behind the plan of salvation, but it is also what brings that salvation to us individually and effectively. Despite all this, there are today in most of our churches probably only a small percentage of people who really believe in grace, much less appreciate it. They pay lip service to grace; they know we are “saved by grace” apart from our own good works. But there they stop. If they were to tell the truth, most would probably say that they find the topic of “grace” boring.

If we have come to this point having understood what has been taught earlier, we know what grace is and are prepared to marvel at it, as Paul himself does in this section. I want you to see the subject of grace in its broadest context, showing how the grace of God operates. There are five main categories: (1) Electing grace. As soon as we see that grace really is apart from any possible merit in its object, we understand that God is utterly sovereign in His choices. The grace of God, like God Himself, is before all other things. It is from grace that all good comes. (2) Pursuing grace. The God of grace has been called “The Hound of Heaven,” who pursues rebellious man. We may think at times that we have sought God. But as we grow in grace and increasingly learn the nature of our own sinful hearts, we discover that we have sought Him only because He first sought us. (3) Pardoning grace. This is the very core of salvation. We are more accustomed to speak of this core as justification by faith, but that is only convenient theological shorthand. What we mean when we speak of justification by faith is justification by the grace of God through faith, according to which we are moved from the status of a condemned criminal awaiting a terrible sentence to that of an heir awaiting a fabulous inheritance. (4) Persevering grace. The Christian life is not passive on our part. We are active in it. When Christ calls us we come running. But notice: We persevere because He perseveres. We endure to the end because the grace of God preserves us. It’s absurd to suppose that we are able to keep ourselves in grace even for a single moment. If it were up to us, in the final analysis all would be lost. Grace has brought us to where we are now, and that same grace, persevering grace, will lead us to glory. (5) Saving grace. Although salvation is usually thought of in reference to our being justified or pardoned only, salvation is actually a more embracing concept. It refers to the past: God saved us from sin’s penalty in Christ. It concerns the present: God is saving us from sin’s power now. It looks to the future: God will save us from sin’s very presence when we are given resurrection bodies and are taken into His holy presence forever. How? It is by grace, grace only.

Romans 5:15-17 Reflection Questions:

Are you “in Jesus”? If Adam, who once humanly perfect fell, what chance do you have to stand, you who are corrupted by many sins and wholly disposed to unrighteousness? Your only hope is to believe on Jesus and be joined to Him.

Reflect and journal on how God pursued you.

What are some examples of God pursuing man in Scripture?