I like being a cookie

When I was in Bible college, I observed that some of the young people seemed to be there against their will. Their parents delivered them to this school with the hope that the Bible college experience would mold them into upstanding citizens.

This idea of being stamped into a mold is behind the Greek words in the last phrase of today’s verse. It says,

But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. (Romans 6:17)

From this, my mind forms a picture of sinners moving in an assembly line toward Jesus. They go in bad and come out all looking the same, as if what Jesus does for them is like a giant cookie cutter turning out identical cookies.

However, that is not the right image. When Jesus Christ changes a person, they become more like Him, but we do not look or act the same as each other. Being a Christian does not mean losing your personality. It does mean losing your sin.

The author of my devotional reading explains how that works. When someone is stamped into the “Christian” mold, they are given “a heartfelt desire to obey God.”

This is not an “I should” or a “you must” kind of desire. While we can fall into obedience as a sense of duty, what God intends is obedience from the heart. Obedience becomes an appealing word.

Since Christ came into my life, obedience is my deepest desire. I want to obey God, not because I am afraid of Him, or afraid of hell, but because I love Him and trust Him. I know that He has delivered me from the power of sin, and even though I sometimes fall back under its influence, that deliverance is a wonderful thing. Obedience is a wonderful thing too. Through it, I learn the power and wisdom of God. He gives commands because He knows what is good for me.

Christians often say that every person obeys something or someone. The Bible says we obey either God or sin. We are not as free as we’d like to think. There is no middle ground. When I do what I want, that “doing my own thing” is sin. Isaiah 53:6 says that, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him (Jesus Christ) the iniquity of us all.”

Romans 6 and other passages are black and white about this; I am either doing the will of God or obeying sin, but my mind is often shades of gray. I don’t always know what side of the fence I am standing on, or if what I am doing is from “my own way” or from the Holy Spirit. Sometimes the only way I can tell is by realizing that I have tipped over into sin and lost that love, peace, and patience that come from the Holy Spirit.

Part of the problem of these gray areas is that if I get too busy with self-examination, my motivations shift easily into self-absorption and then into self-indulgence, and that is sin.

Instead of looking at me, I’m to look at the Author and Finisher of my faith, the Lord Jesus Christ. Instead of being delighted in my own things, I am to delight myself in God. These may sound easy to some, difficult to others. All I know is that I have been delivered from slavery to sin and have a new Master and a new way to live. When I obey Him from the heart, life is incredible and my focus is not on me. I feel free, no longer in bondage.

But when I don’t obey Him, I’m back to obeying sin. I hate the shackles and feeling like a slave. The only positive about such failure and foolishness is that it humbles me and helps me remember all over again that I am not able, and sometimes not even willing, to save myself. Jesus is my Savior and as today’s verse says, God be thanked!