Romans 6.12-23, my version


Watch out for the power of your ego and its fearful demands. Any aspect of yourself can be an instrument of your distrustful instinct for self-protection. Don’t let yourself be used like that. Make yourself available to God as those who have been brought from death to life. Make every aspect of yourself available to God as an instrument of justice. Selfish desire will have no power over you. You don’t have to be good enough for God. You’re already beloved.

So does that mean you can do whatever you want because God will love you? Well, no. You see, in reality you are not as free as you think: you are being played— either by your selfish distrust, which is a kind of death, or by God in you, which leads to a beautiful life. Be grateful to God! You used to be controlled by your selfish fear, but now you have been trained in a new way: you have been set free from fearful self-protection and have learned to be guided by your relationship with God.

I’m using these metaphors because of our natural human limitations. In the old way of living any aspect yourself would be a tool in the hands of your sin—your deepening fear, separation and inauthenticity. But now every aspect of your life is available to God as an instrument of justice and healing, willing to be continually perfected. When you are a tool of your distrust you are free all right: free from being controlled by God. Well, what good is it to feel free to do things that make you ashamed? That’s just a kind of death. But you are free from your ego: you are an instrument of God, and that’s how we become holy and perfect in love. That’s how we experience life that is infinite. Trying to earn God’s approval just earns us death, but trusting God we receive infinite life as a free gift. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Beloved.

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God, make me an instrument of your peace.

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