Readings:
Isaiah 29-32
Romans 6:15-23

Isaiah 29-32

Isaiah described the coming siege of the city, but he doesn’t live to see the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, so this siege is most likely the one about 50 years earlier that was done by the Assyrian army. God says that these people honor him with their lips, but their hearts are far from him. These words will be quoted by Jesus when he condemns the outward piety of the Pharisees.

In many ways these prophecies of doom and judgements shouldn’t be a surprise because the people knew what was expected of them, and except for a few, they utterly failed at every step. They done all the things God told them not to do. But even with all this doom, there’s still glimmering hope and promises of future salvation.

Romans 6:15-23

Paul again opens this part with a hypothetical question, and again answers in the negative. A basic principle of Christian morality is that you can’t commit evil that a good might come from it, or to put it in other words, the ends never justify the means. Paul is saying that we never have a license to sin or a reason to sin. We may slip up and sin from time to time, but we can’t justify it in any way, we must only repent.

Bob Dylan once said “you’re gunna have to serve somebody. It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gunna have to serve somebody” and I’m sure he got that lyric from Romans 6. We can have liberty in Christ, or slavery in sin, but we have to pick a side and put our back into the work. There are no neutrals here, because those that claim to be agnostic or atheist and then indulge in the pleasures of the world, they’re slaves to their own appetites, and since the fall that appetite has been sin, and that leaves us in league with the devil.

Bob Dylan’s razor comes back around.

Tomorrow’s Readings:
Isaiah 33-35
Romans 7:1-6