Space-Filling Thoughts

  Last time, we established the fact that the overarching purpose of the apostle in this chapter is to demonstrate the fact that every Christian is dead to sin, or, more accurately, has definitively and irreversibly died to sin.  This is something that has happened at the beginning of the Christian life, in the new birth, when God gives us a new heart, new affections, a new will, so that there is a fundamentally new relationship to sin.  In particular, as Paul emphasizes here, we are no longer under its power and dominion.  It’s not that we no longer sin at all, but that we can now say no to sin in a way that we could not before.  We are no longer taken captive by the devil at his will.  We can resist the devil, and he will flee from us.  And it is on the basis of this categorical death to sin that we can put particular sins to death. What I tried to do was to show you what it meant to die to sin in verse 2 from the overall context of the first 14 vers...