Don’t Go Back to the Dark

Saturday, June 29, 2019

by Dr. Paul Chappell

“But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.”

Romans 6:17–19

In April of 2006, two workers were trapped in a gold mine near Beaconsfield, Australia, after an earthquake caused the tunnels to collapse. They only survived because they were able to make it into a safety cage that kept them from being crushed by falling rocks. For five days no one outside the mine knew whether they had survived. Finally a thermal imaging scan revealed their location, and rescue efforts began. It was a full fourteen days before rescuers could create a shaft large enough for the miners to escape. The head of the miner’s union called the rescue a “great escape.”

All of us are born trapped as slaves to sin. There is no hope that we can rescue ourselves. Unless someone comes from the outside to help, we are doomed. That is what Jesus did for us on the cross. We have been freed from the power that sin once had over our lives. Yet if we’re honest, we must admit that even after we are saved, the allure of sin remains, because we still have a fallen nature.

Having been freed from our captivity, we must resist the temptation to crawl back into the darkness of sin. Paul wrote, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1). Sin no longer has the power to compel us, so each sin requires our willing participation.

Today's Growth Principle: 

When we sin, we are willingly exchanging freedom and light for slavery and darkness.