Thursday, April 23, 2020

Taking Inventory

"Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.  Death no longer has dominion over Him.
For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 6:8-11 (NKJV) 

More than once in my life, I have worked in a place where I was responsible for keeping track of the inventory.  This all happened years ago, so I usually kept track of the inventory by making a list on a piece of paper.  It was my responsibility to go through the store to check on the various items we had to sell, and to be sure that the inventory was accurate.  My job was to know what we had in our inventory and what was available to us, if we didn’t know what we had, we could not have made use of it.

An inventory is necessary to keep track of items in a business, because without an accurate inventory you may not know what you actually have.  What is true naturally is also true spiritually, sometimes people do not accurately know what they have.  If you don’t know what you possess and have naturally you cannot make use of it, and if you don’t know what you possess and have spiritually you cannot make use of it.  Romans 6:11 tells us to “reckon” or “to take an inventory” of our being dead to sin and alive to God in Christ.

Through Christ, we have been separated from the power of sin and its ability to dominate our lives.  Not only that, but 2 Corinthians 5:17 says we are a new creation in Christ and old things have passed away; 2 Corinthians 5:21 says we are the righteousness of God in Christ.  What else do we have in Christ, what belongs to us now?  The best way to find out is to go through the New Testament, and especially the Epistles, to see what we have now that we are in Christ.  As a Christian, there are things we possess and have in Christ that we need to know about.

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