Seize the Opportunity!

 

Sin Is an Opportunist

"But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness."

Did sin take advantage of the commandment to create all kinds of covetousness or is Paul saying that sin is inactive without the law?. It seems that both statements are somewhat true, but must be considered in light of the whole body of teaching and a larger context.

Go for the point that Paul in making: We are now free, not to do wrong, but to live rightly. We have a clean slate and a new beginning.

But what about sin?

DO NOT THINK ABOUT ICE CREAM

What did you just think about?

I thought so.

May I suggest something else?

Be aware of your options and the forces working within you and take charge of your choices?

You now have a choice.

Yes, sin is an opportunist, but so is righteousness. God's power can help you make the right choices today. That is the power of living under grace rather than merely law.

Romans:1-12

 Do you not know, brothers and sisters-- for I am speaking to those who know the law-- that the law is binding on a person only during that person's lifetime? Thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress. In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit. What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.

Seize the opportunity!