Don’t Let Sin Reign

Passage: Romans 6:8-14

A lot of you have been spending time in your gardens and flower beds preparing the soil and planting.  You are well aware of how our own battle with sin is often likened to gardening.  Actually there are three ways our battle with dying to sin and killing sin can be compared to gardening.

The first battle with sin is like a field or weed patch that has not yet by cultivated at all.  The first battle with sin is the battle God does.  God plows the weed patch under, and makes it a garden.  It is now a garden, and not a weed patch.  The old status is dead.  That is like the old man with his old nature being rooted out.  Sinners are turned into saints.  God does all the work.

The second battle is what happens when that garden is untended or neglected for a few weeks, and you come back to find weeds up to your knees and threatening to take over.  This is dangerous when it comes to sin, it shows a lack of wisdom, a lack of understanding or appreciation of the nature of sin.  They may be hard to pull out.

The third kind of battle is what any good gardener will tell you about.  Get out there every morning, and pull up the weeds that are the size of your fingers.  Sin will always be there but if they are attended to right away they will not take root in our souls.  This is the daily battle called sanctification.