Romans 6:12-13 “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.”
Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.“
Sin… it’s the bane of all our lives. Often we don’t even realise what bondage sin keeps us in until God reveals it to us. When we become aware of our sinfulness before our holy God, we are called to repent and turn from it. Easy… I don’t think so. Yet Jesus said blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. If we know that, why do we keep getting caught up in sinful acts? Why do we allow sin to ‘reign’ or to sit on the throne of our lives.
I have been wrestling more lately with how to turn from the pleasures of sin, to not give into the ‘natural’ tendencies of my humanity. If I know it’s wrong… then why do I give in or stuff up so often! Why do I let down my Lord when He has sacrificed so much for me?!
Christians are at war!
I would like to share a couple of things that I have learnt/been reinforced to me recently, through a couple of messages by John Piper on Romans. They have really helped change my thinking and approach to the battleground of Christianity. Yes battleground! If you don’t feel battered and bruised in your pursuit of following Christ, then you are not picking up your cross! We are in a war, and we must allow God to equip us for the fight to live holy, Christ-honouring lives in a corrupt, self-indulgent and wicked world. The first point I want to share looks at our enemy – sin. The second point looks at our General, our Leader and hope in Christ. I will address the first point now and in my next post. The second point in the following two posts.
We can be mistaken into thinking that sin is defined as the disobedient acts we do against God. Although that is not entirely untrue, we will NOT win our daily fight against sin if we try to follow a list of “do’s” and “don’ts”. Our primary form of attack is not an act of our fragile wills to ‘do what it right’. It’s much more powerful, but more on that later. Our enemy, sin, is much more then disobedient acts. It is a force that is at war with our souls. It is trying to take reign of our hearts and corrupt us against God. The visible result of sin reigning within are the disobedient acts, however we need to attack sin at a much deeper level to prevent those acts from birthing.
How do we do this? How do we turn from the sin in our lives when it can feel so good to give in? First we need to understand the strategy sin adopts in taking reign of our lives and how it attacks our souls so we can be better prepared to engage it more successfully.
More on that next time.
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