Your Master is the one you obey

Who do you want your master to be, God or satan?

How do we know who our master is?

Romans 6:12–18 NIV

12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 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. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. 15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! 16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

What did we learn about seeing the word ‘therefore’, we need to look and see what it is there for.

In this chapter, Paul is talking about how some people were living like sin didn’t matter. Because Jesus’ death and resurrection freed us from living under the law so we don’t have the same kind of rules to follow as the Jews did. But some people were doing whatever they wanted because they knew that God would forgive them no matter what they did.

The problem with living that way is you are making bad choices and other people see you making bad choices. And, you aren’t really living like you love God. Because He says that if we love Him we should do what He says. So other people can see that we live differently than everyone else.

They were taking the gift of salvation and forgiveness and abusing it. It would be like using a painting as toilet paper. Its something that you are supposed to display and look at to remind you of how much God loves us, but when you abuse it you are just using it clean off all of your bad choices. And that was not what God designed salvation to be.

Our master is not who we want to listen to, our master is who we actually listen to. So you can want God to be your master, but if you aren’t listening and obeying what He has told us to do, then our master is really satan because our master is who we obey, not just who we want our master to be.

What can we do, now that we understand this, to make sure that we are listening and obeying God and not satan? (pray, read our Bible, make sure that we react in a way that honors God)