Whose Your Master?

We are all slaves to something.  Whether you like to admit it or not we do submit to something in this life.  For some it is a person, others an ideal or principle, some a religion, and others a deity.  Regardless we all submit to something.  Even anarchists submit to a principle that the state is undesirable and become slaves to that principle.  The problem is that humanity with all it philosophies and practices is subject to sin.  Sin is missing the mark as far as God is concerned.  That means that the highest ideal that humanity can come up with the highest ethics that we can imagine still fall short of God's measure.  In this way all ways of men are subject to sin.  Humanity is in bondage to sin.  Being in bondage is synonymous with being a slave.  Being a slave to sin is the same as serving the devil. 

There is something that masters your heart.  What is it?  In Romans 6:15-23 Paul describes how we are to be slaves to righteousness.  When we come to Christ we have the freedom to choose what will be our master.  If we choose sin then we are telling God that we do not want Him to be Lord of our life.  We are rejecting the freedom that is found in him.  Instead we are choosing sin and the implications that come from choosing sin. 

For the wages of sin is death. Romans 6:23a (HCSB)

It is a strange thing to talk of wages in the context of slavery. Yet if we choose sin then we are choosing death.  What is more a person that continually chooses sin (without repentance) provides evidence that they are not saved. 

Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.
1 John 3:7-10 (NASB)

Making sin a practice of your life proves who is your master (the devil).  The end result is death.  God want to give life.  His Spirit is life to the Believer that His Spirit dwells in.  However, God must be Lord of your life and you must commit to being a slave of righteousness if you are to have hope of life free from sin.   In other words it is not enough to merely live your life avoiding sin, one must determine to allow God's Spirit to have hold of and direct your every day.  Otherwise you have the deception of being in control of your life, but in reality you are still a slave to sin.  More on this in my next post. 

 Text of poem here

God Bless You.