Introduction: For hundreds of years many Christian traditions have read passages of scripture using a tool called a lectionary. During this ordinary season, our devotional team decided to resource you with selections from the Revised Common Lectionary.
Source: the Revised Common Lectionary Year A
(Note. If you desire to read these passages in a different version of the Bible, this link will provide all the readings for week 2 in Bible Gateway where you may choose other versions of these passages.)
Romans 6:12-23
6:12 Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.6:13 No longer present your members to sin as instruments [weapons*] of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments [weapons* ] of righteousness.
* (translation from the Greek)
6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
6:15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
6:16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
6:17 But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted,
6:18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
6:19 I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
6:20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
6:21 So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death.
6:22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.
6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, a Man stood opposite him with His sword drawn in His hand. And Joshua went to Him and said to Him, “Are You for us or for our adversaries?”
14 So He said, “No, but as Commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.”
And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and said to Him, “What does my Lord say to His servant?”
15 Then the Commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, “Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy.” And Joshua did so.
Joshua 5:13-15 NKJV
So, when we encounter the Lord of Hosts (as did Joshua), through Scripture and the Holy Spirit’s interactions with us, do we react with Joshua’s response? “Are You for us or for our adversaries?” From His response to Joshua, we should assess whether we are daily on His Side or not? That is, are we submitting as His slave to righteousness, not to wickedness?
And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua 24:15
Surely, by the grace by which we are empowered to live humbly by the Spirit, we are on holy ground.
