24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.
This verse gives us the reason Jesus died in our place. He died so that we might end our relationship with sin and live in a manner that reflects the character of God. If we could grasp these two simple directions for our lives in this earthly body, we would live a much more focused life. We would work daily to end our relationship with sin. Since we began our new life of surrender to Jesus, we need to listen to His voice as He speaks into our lives and guides us away from sin. Sin is not simply one of life’s unpleasantries. Sin is the deadly poison that keeps us from everything of true worth and value in this life and the next. It can taste so sweet when we first start, but it ends up taking our last breath from us. Notice that we are to die to “sins” not just to “sin.” There are individual sins that the Lord will point out to us in an effort to get us to die to them. We must choose to end our relationship with those particular sins. We must choose to stop walking in the direction of that sin and choose to walk toward something else. It is not enough to simply stop the sin, we must choose something else, something that pleases God instead. We substitute a God-pleasing activity for a sinful one. It is not so much a giving up as it is a picking up. We must pick up the habits of a life lived in right relationship to God. The simple question “What would Jesus do?” that again became a buzz phrase in Christian circles several years ago is a great question to ask. That question requires us to think about the character of Jesus and whether the chosen course of action fits with that character. If we took part in this kind of filtering process in our lives, we would probably let go of more sin and pick up more right-living. And that is the goal, let go of sin and pick up the character of God.
The Arnold Journey 