I walked into training camp carrying 39 pounds of gear for the week in my backpack. Little did I know, I was carrying so much more. The first few days of training camp were all about letting go. Of expectations (more on that later!), of the past, of unforgiveness.
Michael Hindes referred to these things as a "body of death" as mentioned in Romans 7:21-25: So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!
There was a Roman method of punishment in which they literally tied the dead body of a murdered person to that of the murderer. "There was the living man, with a dead body closely strapped to him, rotting, putrid, corrupting, and this he must drag with him wherever he went. For as that body decayed, the decay would be transmitted onto and into the body of the murderer. It would only be a matter of time before the one who carried the body would succumb to his own death. Death permeated every waking moment."
That is how sin is in our lives, though we are alive, it infects us and is slowly killing us. But as Paul wrote, Jesus died to save us from this and set us free. This is what a lot of Training Camp was for me, letting go of the things that tied me down and replacing the lies that used to define me with the truth. Cutting these things off does not eliminate temptation, but it empowers us to live as dead to sin and alive in Christ rather than decaying from our past offenses.
