NEW LEAF OR NEW LIFE

NEW LEAF OR NEW LIFE?

Rom 6:11-12

11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.

           I’m not making resolutions this year! For one thing, I’m too tired from the year just passed to consider anything very ambitious. For another thing, I can’t remember ever being successful at making and keeping resolutions. Oh, I will begin again to do better, like most folks, but I don’t think turning over a new leaf will work for me this year. I think a new life might be more in order.

           To turn over a new leaf means to make a fresh start, to change your behavior or attitude. In the 16th century people referred to pages in a book as “leaves”. When they turned over a new leaf it meant they were turning to a blank page in a workbook to start a new lesson. This could also be more generally used as to say you’re turning over a page of your life and starting a new. Certainly, we are looking at a blank page this morning, but we bring to the task the same old habits and tendencies. The story will probably be painfully familiar.

           A new life is what Paul recommends in our Scripture above. It requires a new reckoning. The word reckon is the Greek logizomai and it basically means to take inventory and to count something as so that isn’t. Paul said that success lies in responding to sin as a dead person. The idea is that dead people do not respond to lusts. They don’t sin. More importantly, is to reckon yourself alive unto God. We must respond to every prompting of the Holy Spirit. We must act upon the urging of the Word of God.

Dear Lord, before me lies a blank page. I do not want to write the same story as before. I want to respond to you. I want to be alive unto God. Take the pen and write a masterpiece for my life. AMEN