Standing in our rock-solid hope of God’s amazing grace carries with it the danger of breeding complacency: “Now that I’ve got my ticket to heaven, what more do I need?” Sadly, this is how many Christians view God and His purpose for their life. It’s a self-centered mind-set, since it boils down to little more than making a better life for ourselves here on earth, with the added bonus of a fabulous heavenly life later.
       Well, saved is wonderful, but our reconciliation with God encompasses a whole lot more than merely our initial regeneration. Rather, the primary reason for God doing all He has through Christ Jesus is to pave the way for godliness to become the standard of our life in Him. Salvation is merely the starting point. Through redemption, we are provided the framework of choice. And choice by faith is the very heart of our life—and growth in that life—as Christians.

A constant theme in Paul’s writings is freedom from law. But this truth isn’t easy to accept because we instinctively feel the need to work for God’s grace. So time and again we see Christians falling back into works in an attempt to ensure their standing with God.
        But doesn’t it seem a bit silly that, once being saved, we would willingly abandon our life of liberty? Think back to what your life was like when Jesus rescued you from your sin. In and of ourselves, could any of us have achieved righteousness in God’s eyes? Of course not!
        Each and every one of us had to rely totally on Jesus to clean up the mess we’d made of our lives. How, then, could we think that now we might somehow be capable of building relationship with God by our own efforts? Needless to say, it’s impossible in our own strength.

From Free from the Power of Sin: the Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself

In Romans 7, Paul says that freedom from law is actually the basis for our freedom from sin. He uses the example of a married woman who by Law is accountable to her husband. But when her husband dies, she is free from that responsibility.
        Yet although the wife is the one who has been freed from the law, she didn’t die at all; her husband did! And so it is with us. By comparison, we’re like the living wife rather than the dead husband when talking about our own death to sin. In Christ, we are just as dead to law in regard to our sin as she is to the commandment which once governed her marriage.
        God has acquitted His children of wrongdoing because the punishment for sin—that is, separation from Him—is no longer enforced. This is the key to understanding the true nature of our death to sin.

“Our body of sin has been done away with,” Romans 6 tells us. “Wow! My flesh is finally dead!” Yet deep down it’s really hard to believe, because “our body of sin” being ”done away with” doesn’t actually mean what we think. Our sinful flesh didn’t go anywhere. It’s clinging close at hand. This can be very disheartening, because we find ourselves continually bombarded by a sense of guilt—made all the worse by Satan’s accusation and deceit.
        Yet even though we have to drag that old baggage around in our new life in Christ, God has solved our dilemma. He truly did cause our old self to die, for our sinful flesh has now become a non-issue in His eyes. “Doing away with our body of sin” literally means that our flesh has been rendered powerless. Jesus got rid of the problem for us!

From Free from the Power of Sin: the Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself