You were a servant of sin and an enemy of Christ before you heard the gospel of your salvation and believed. 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, romans 1:16. You were alienated from the life of God and were dead in your trespasses and sin. Ephesians 2:10-11 There was no hope for you outside of the hope of salvation to get you near to God and to be in his presence, for God cannot join himself to sin. God is holy and unsaved man is unholy. So, he provided the perfect sacrifice for sin by sending his only Son, who was born in the flesh and lived a sinless life, and shed his blood on the cross for all our sins. He was buried and rose the third day and the Father accepted his perfect sacrifice and was pleased. Now, if we trust in Jesus and what he did for us on the cross, we are justified of all things which we could not be justified of under the law. Romans 5:6, 5:9, 6:14
So, whose life are you living? Your own, or God’s? 1 Corinthians 6:20 says For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. So, whose body are you living in? God’s! He bought you and you are his now. Is that a good thing? Many of us believe that if we are God’s and we must serve him, then that makes our lives dull and uninteresting and without true joy and excitement. But when we think about who we were before we were saved and where we were headed, we should always feel indebted out of gratitude to serve God. Did he save us so that we could continue to lie, cheat, steal, and serve ourselves? Romans 6:1-2 No! He saved us so that we could finally serve Him. Without salvation, nobody can serve him. Now that we are saved, God does not want us to be double minded. We cannot serve two masters. So which will we serve now that we are saved? Self, or God? Satan or God? Serving Self is what Lucifer did when his heart was lifted up in pride. We follow his pattern and the pattern of fallen Adam when we choose to serve self over God. But God makes it possible for us to serve him if we will allow his Spirit to lead us. His words are power and his words are life John 6:63. We can only live by his word if we let his word dwell in us Colossians 3:16.
After all God has done for us, we would be fools to go back to our old man and serve self. Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
It is reasonable for us to offer up our own bodies as a living sacrifice of service to God after our Saviour laid down his life for us to have the life we have in him. If we let his Spirit lead us, we can not only bring him glory, but he will also reward us when we stand before him at the judgment seat. Let us not lose any time and get into the word to learn and grow and serve him according to his will.
When you serve God, you are working towards a lasting eternal blessing from God. When we serve self, we injure the witness we have to be a minister of his grace and truth to others and will reap loss of reward. Let’s keep being transformed by his word so that we can work toward his eternal glory! Romans 12:2 Colossians 3:1
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