Romans, Chapters 5 & 6: Sex and Death

Chapter 5

You know when you have a bad day and you take it to Facebook, and one of your weirdo Christian friends comments something like, 'God never puts more on your shoulders than you can hold?' I'm pretty sure they have Romans 5 in mind, which is all about how everything is leading up to the big moment when you'll be reunited with Jesus in heaven, so suffering is a good thing, because it makes you patient, which gives us experience, which gives us hope, and we can never be disappointed, because Christ died for our sins. Ugh. There has to be some point where you can no longer play that card.

Paul further points out that most of us would not be willing to die for a good person. That's true. I, for one, would not die for most people, good or bad. Anyway, the end result is, now Jesus will protect us from god's wrath. Again, not by giving us vaccines or clean water or anything. And now we're even sort of friends with god through Jesus.

Apparently, all the people before Moses sinned, but it doesn't count because they didn't have the Ten Commandments yet, and the punishment was death. Now, though, the circle has closed and we'll no longer die or something. Or we'll go to heaven, where we'll be immortal. As long as Jesus likes us. Or something.

Chapter 6

So does all this mean we can go on sinning and achieve grace? No, that would be fun. Rather, we parted ways with sin when we all died with Jesus, and we'll go on to eternal life like him when we die.

Did you know that old man  (v. 6) is a biblical expression? I did not. But it doesn't refer to your father, it refers to your self before Jesus, the one who sinned. And what is sin? Giving into lust, basically. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God (v. 13). Alas, it does not specify how one might wield one's penis as a holy weapon.

But now we have a choice: we can be slaves to sin or slaves to obedience and we can use our naughty bits accordingly. Except if you choose wrong, you'll die because the wages of sin is death (v. 23). It's like an abstinence video.