Research has shown that it takes 21 days to establish a new habit. In a book entitled ‘Psycho-Cybernetics’, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon, noticed that it took 21 days for amputees to cease feeling phantom sensations in the amputated limb. From further observations he found it took 21 days to create a new habit and wrote about this development which has been helpful to many people in understanding that change can happen, but perhaps takes longer than we expect.

In the Bible study this week, we looked at Romans 6:1-14, focussing on verse 11, which says “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” That means a reckoning, a pausing, a definite stopping to recall the facts revealed to us in the Gospel: namely that Christ died and rose again, therefore sin no longer has mastery over him – and because we are in Christ, it no longer has to have mastery of us. We can, in the words of Ephesians 4, “put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and [to] put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:22-24)

Various heresies concerning grace and the Gospel have been around since the New Testament was written. Paul refutes one in Romans 6, namely the view that if grace flourishes where there is sin, we ought to sin more so that grace can abound! This view has a false understanding of both sin and grace and Paul refutes it emphatically here, because if we have a true understanding of what Christ accomplished on the cross, we see that we can’t entertain sin in our lives; we are no longer slaves to sin, running errands for our old nature like a servant eager to do his master’s bidding. We now have a new master!

But another false teaching was that because of all Christ has accomplished on the cross, we can live lives of sinless perfection here and now. John refutes this teaching most emphatically in 1 John 1:8-10, but it is also clear from this passage in Romans 6 that there is a new way of life expected of us. We now have the power to choose. We can choose to obey sin (our old master) or we can choose to obey God. We can offer ourselves to sin, or we can offer ourselves to God.

For most of us, it takes considerably longer than 21 days to work this out in our everyday lives! You could say it takes us a lifetime. But the good news of the Gospel is that we now have a choice. Sin no longer has mastery over us. We can know freedom. We may find it difficult to resist temptation; we may need help in overcoming some of the sins that specifically cause us to stumble (see Hebrews 12), but Christ has shown us that there is a new way of life. The chains of sin have been broken and the symbolism of baptism shows that we are identified with Christ’s death and resurrection. “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:4)

Just as I never thought I would be able to give up my sweet tooth but had to, on being diagnosed as diabetic, so we can live differently through the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. We can learn to RISE:
Reduce what is wrong in our lives, fleeing where necessary from the things we know cause us to fall
Increase the good things we can do in our lives
Substitute good things for the things that cause us to stumble
Eliminate the problem

This may, indeed, take a lifetime of practice, but we now have an alternative way of living. We don’t have to let sin have the mastery over us – thanks be to God! We can find, in the words of Michael Card, a ‘better freedom’, for Christ has ‘enslaved my soul to set me free’ – another of those paradoxes which make up the mystery of the Gospel!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxxcTvtURP4