WE FIGHT SIN NOT OURSELVES

By Margie Littell

 

Many sincere Christians feel that they are tied to God with a yo-yo string and are tugged in and out of favor with God by the way they behave or sin. They never feel the security and rest of the “in-Christ” message of the New Testament. This insecurity is usually based on the unresolved issue of “sinning” after they are converted at the cross. Added to this unresolved issue, Satan loves to try to manipulate Christians with feelings of guilt and remorse. Many Christians never feel the “peace which passes all understanding” because they are waffling between these two factors in their hearts.

Why do we still sin, even if we accept Jesus Christ and believe that we are in Him after the Cross? 

Why are we still plagued with bad choices leading to bad behaviors? 

Does this fact alter our relationship with God? 

Do we fall away from the “in-Christ” relationship thus requiring us to ask for forgiveness and beg for God to accept us back? 

These are very good questions, and they are questions God knew we would ask. So, He supplies the answers to each one. He loves and understands us more than we sometimes realize.

Paul struggled with this same issue, too. In fact, chapter 7 in Romans expresses the torment of this struggle. In fact, I had read this chapter many times before I realized that it answered my own doubts about my relationship with God. 

 Paul describes this battle in a personal observation of Romans 7 beginning with verse 7 and he continues in greater detail in Romans 8. He even tells us Who wins! “We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” 

In the midst of this view of the personal battlefield that we all face, there are verses which give us hope, and joy, and peace! 

Romans 7:17: “As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is SIN living in me.” 

Romans 7:20: “Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is SIN living in me that does it!” 

Romans 7:23: “But I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”

Romans 7:24: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to GOD through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Here is where many Christians de-rail their own peace of mind! 

Yes, they agree that we will always struggle with sin until the end of time, but in the meantime, we have to fight the sin in our lives, repeatedly repent, and hopefully by the end, we will have won more times than we have lost, so that God will take us home with Him. In other words, many people think they have to work at maintaining their salvation.

 

Fallacy Renounced

Paul answers that fallacy and false belief immediately in all of Romans 8. Read it and rejoice! “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

God tells us that when we come to the cross; our old self dies, and we live again as a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). 

NOW, We are on God’s side in this battle, and we want what HE wants. Our fight is not against ourselves; it is against a law of sin that dwells within our flesh. Satan lies to us, and he makes it seem that this evil is us. Our thoughts may make it sound like us, and our emotions may make it feel like us. After all, we still have our old habits in our synapses.

We do, indeed, feel the conflict within us every day because of the sinful environment in which we live, and because our flesh is not yet glorified.

Remember, however, that God tells us that we are a “new creation”, and He exposes Satan’s lie to us. He promises to come back and deliver us permanently from this power of evil that is still in our “members”, but in the meantime, God knows that we cannot fight what lives within us without His help. 

Indeed, He asks us not to fight at all but to “Stand” and to “Pray”, as Paul explains in Ephesians 6:10–17. In fact, we are to trust Him, and He will fight for us, as Moses explained to the Israelites in Exodus 14:14: “ The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” 

When we are in Christ, over time, it becomes more natural for us to choose what God wants, to express the fruits of the spirit, and to rejoice in all He accomplishes for us, even though we are tempted to sin. Our Father has credited us with Christ’s own righteousness, and He has given us a new heart and a new spirit. We are new creatures, and we grow to love what the Lord loves.

Here is the bottom line: when we sin as believers, we are not fighting against who we are in Christ. We have to understand that fact, because Jesus taught that a house divided against itself will not stand. 

In fact, being in Christ is very practical in our daily lives. When we say no to sin, we’re not saying no to our identities in Christ but to a power of sin in our flesh. When we reject sin and choose to express Christ, however, we are living our deepest desires. Although the power of sin within us is crafty, devious, and sinful, our new selves in Christ aren’t! Our born-again spirits are clean, and our hearts crave what God wants us to do (1 John 3:1-10).

But what happens when we do make a wrong decision and behave badly? Does God turn His back on us and drop us out of favor with Him? Do we have to start all over again? That is where three little words (repeated over and over in Hebrews and used by Peter) give us some really good news: “Once and for all!”  

Hebrews 10:10: And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

We don’t have to start all over; everything we need to do and everything God has done is complete, once and for all! We run to him confessing that we have given in to temptation and allow His completed atonement to assure us that we are still His children.

He is our Father now, and He will not abandon us. In Christ’s name, we can call out to God, “Abba (daddy); I am sorry” (Rom. 8:15-17). God’s grace teaches us what is good and what is evil (Tit. 2:11-14). His mercy accepts our apology and continually forgives our sinning. Therefore, our relationship with Him is still secure! Even when Satan tries to make our hearts condemn us with guilt, God is stronger (1 Jn. 3:20).

Are you beginning to see why the gospel is really such GOOD NEWS!? †

Margie Littell
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