Worth it - Just because we are worth it doesn't mean we should sin.

Worth it!

Have you ever had something that has a crazy amount of worth to you?

Like a collectable hat?

A stuffed animal?

Your “new” car?

a favourite sweater?

What has that tremendous worth to you?

For me it’s my Lego set. You break my legos sets I will be thoroughly disappointed in you.

Like how could you drop my lego set, I have to rebuild that.

I remember I had this one set on my old desk as a teen and one of my cousins destroyed it so bad that I could not even put it back together again.

See my lego sets have enough worth that I would go through the process of putting them back together, or that I would even put them up on my shelve or on my desk so that they would not break and I could show them off.

In the same way Jesus has decided that you have tremendous worth.

That when Adam and Eve brought sin in the world and we became broken people, with sin.

Jesus still placed worth in us that we would go to the cross and fix us again.

However what does that look like as we continue down the walk of faith.

Last week we talked about how we are to take on the identity of being a Child of God.

This week we are going to talk about what does continuing to have that Christian identity look like.

How do we keep our uniqueness of following Christ with us all the days of our life?

If Jesus has decided we have worth, which he did by dieing on the cross. That provided us with Grace, and this grace is pretty awesome that we would just give it out for following him.

However once we receive grace we are then called to make our foundation Jesus and this is where we are going this week “to continue to be more like him”

So jumping into the bible know that we have Grace, Apostle Paul has some words for us this week

Romans 6:1–4 NIV

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

See if we have taken on that idenitiy of Christian or child of God we are not called to living in Sin but rather we should stop sinning.

If we have recceived grace it’s pretty awesome, to have the forgiveness of sins is really nice. However that does not mean we should keep sinning?

If we reccevied a gift that we did not deserve does that justify more bad behaviour?

Think about it this way, we were talking lego right?

If someone broke my lego set I would rebuild it?

what if it was the 4th time someone broke it?

what if it was the same person the whole time.

Me personally I would not want to rebuild it.

Christ on the other hand keeps giving us grace, remember last we we called him our advocate, that he would vouch for our wrong doings to the father. He will do that forever, but we do not want to continue in our ways of sin.

That if we have been forgiven for a wrong, we should stop that wrong.

This is what it looks like to become a Christian, that we would receive Jesus’ grace by his death on the cross. That we are worth his death on the cross, we were worth the lashings that he receives before he heads there. We are worth of him coming back to life and giving us eternal life with him.

However that never allows for us to keep acting in sin.

We are called here to live a life in like we have already been raised again with Jesus.

Think about it this way:

You break curfew and your parents are now disappointed

You get punished, grounded, video games taken away, car privileges lost. Etc,

Your parents love you even if you mess up but they do not approve of the wrong doing.

They punish the wrongful behaviour because they want it to end, however they still love you.

If we as people continue to sin even when saved, we start to make our idenitity about sin and not about being saved.

Dead to Sin

Listen to what Paul says again:

Romans 6:4 NIV

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

When people get baptised we see it as a repersentation of what Chirst went through,

Going down into the waters repersenting death for him, dead to sins for us. The coming out of the water as a proof of ressurection and for us as new creation, saved person.

Romans 6:5–7 NIV

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

If you join in with Christ in his death then you are dead to sins, just as he died for the sins of all people. When you join in with Christ in the metaphorical death, which is the receiving of him as your saviour and then later the symbolic baptism, you are saying that you are personally dead to sin.

You have set it in your social bios “dead to sin”

just kidding, but what it really means is that part of who you are now, is someone who should be trying to actively escape sin.

That Christianity is not the completion of a sin free life in Christ, it is the idea that you want to get there. Actively trying to live more like Christ with him each day.

So if you have been set free already of sin maybe its time to leave sin at the door.

Maybe thats something you need to stop doing:

swearing

lying

Being jealous

Theft

Disobedience

Sexual sins

Idolatry of things

Your leaders want to help you leave Sin behind. However it’s not going to happen unless you decide that you have died with Christ and that it’s not possible to keep going on with sin.

It’s your choice, Let me just finish with what Paul says in the last part of the passage:

Romans 6:12–14 NIV

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

Do not let Sin be the master of you, becuase you are now under the Law of grace, so whatever sin you struggle with I want you to know that your leaders want to help you conquer it becuase they want you to feel the fullness of freedom.

That you would yes know that Grace is freedom, but that you would actually feel grace’s freedom everyday becuase you no longer have temptions to sin.

So today as we go to small groups I want you to think about his question that leaders will ask you:

How can you make God’s grace apart of your identity?

What happens when you break a rule at home? (Punishment examples - End with but do you parents still love you?)

Why do our parents/teachers/adults try to correct bad behaviour?

So, why should we stop sinning?

How does Romans 6:4 “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Paul’s baptism example show how we should live a sin free life?

What sin do you need to leave behind to follow Jesus?

How can the leaders and this small group help you in that?