To get a feel for how Paul wants us to think here in Romans 6 imagine yourself as a kind of ghost in this world, that is, as people fancifully imagine ghosts to be. Imagine you have died but you are still living on earth. You still communicate with the living but, in fact, you exist now in a different dimension. You are here but there is nothing that binds you here except the love you have for people. You don’t really care about money because you are from a realm with a different currency. You don’t care how fancy your house or car is because you inhabit this world only in a transitory way. You are a ghost passing through with the one purpose of blessing people wherever you can. You look on as people chase after possessions and positions and you see it like we see an infant playing with sticks in the grass. But it is worse than that, for you see people neglecting to love one another because they are so frantically preoccupied with ‘collecting sticks in the grass’. You were once like these other people living in futility, in other words, living in sin. But now you are a ghost, dead to this world’s pursuits, alive only to your calling in God. This is how it is with all of us who have been baptised into Christ. You died in Christ and, though you are here, you belong to a different realm; a different kingdom that is not of this world. You live in the world, but you are not connected to it. This is the death that is both freedom and life.
Reflect on your priorities and your relationship to this world.
Read Romans 6:1-14 again
