I have for
a long time be troubled by the attitude of the church towards sin. We have in
some way treated sin in a way it should not be. Collectively, we treat sin like
a plague and forget that the sin of a man is different from the man himself; individually,
we have forgotten that sin is our enemy, it not only enslaves us, it also
separates us from God, it builds a wall so high and wide that the omnipotent
God will not here us, much more, we cannot hear Him.
What
exactly is Sin and What are we to do about sin?
Can a man
be free from Sin? Can a Christian Walk free of Sin? Can a Christian live in
Dominion over Sin? Can a Christian Conquer Sin? Can a Christian Overcome Sin?
I hope you
have an answer to these questions at the end of reading this. My prayer is that
the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to understand what God is saying and show you
what He wants to do for you.
Let’s start
at Romans 6?
What shall we say [to all this]? Should we continue in
sin and practice sin
as a habit so that [God’s gift of] [a]grace may
increase and overflow? 2 Certainly
not! How can we, the very ones who died to sin, continue to live in it any longer? 3 Or
are you ignorant of the fact that all of us who have been [b]baptized
into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 We
have therefore been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that just as
Christ was raised from the dead through the glory and power of the Father, we too might walk habitually in newness of life
[abandoning our old ways].
Sin is part of the old way, the the old life, we served sin and it was our master. It oppresses and held us bondage. We died to it when we came to Christ
Sin is the number one
enemy of man. As I thought of this I thought to myself, how about the Devil
(Satan); then it hit me, a man can be freed from the devil and then end up a
slave to him again because of sin. However, a man made free from sin, is free
not just from sin alone but every other consequence that sin brings, and the
devil is one of them.
Sin is everything that
exalts itself above God. It sits with the "I" in the middle saying, I am the master of my fate, architect of my
destiny, I will do as I please, this world is mine and I will take it as my
own. Whether these words are true are a matter for another day, but what I
want you to draw from it is that Sin is the putting of anything else above God.
The primary purpose of
redemption was to redeem man from sin. Every other thing that followed was
secondary. Jesus knew this and that was why His message was for all men to
repent and often said to as many as he met “Go
and Sin no more” or in some places “your
sins are forgiven” and to as many as will hear “receive forgiveness of sins”.
Sin is a thought that
sets itself above God, it is an action that makes God lesser than who he is (He
is I AM and is nothing less), it is a habit that makes God the least, it is a
character that is not in the image of our creator himself, it is a nature that is
contrary to what God made man to be, it is a culture that seeks to keep God far
from our thoughts, it is a world worse than the one we have now.
Sin is so cruel a slave
master, a man cannot free himself from Sin. The Bible speaks that Jesus came to
break sin’s “Iron Sway”, Romans 7 says of Sin “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of Death
(Sin),” because the wages of Sin is Death. Sin is such that it finds its
way through generations of men and holds families bound, such that the same
vice that held a father bound, holds his grandson and the likes.
Enough of this eulogy
about Sin!!!
If Sin is all that I
have said it is, what are we to do about it. Can a man ever be free of sin?
The Bible says that”
by one-man Sin came into the world and
spread to all mankind. Even so by one man will Sin be conquered.”
In Romans 7, right at
the end, Paul exclaims “Thanks be to God [for my deliverance]
through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind
serve the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh [my human nature, my
worldliness, my sinful capacity—I serve] the law of sin”.
And goes on to say
this. Therefore, there is now no condemnation (no guilty verdict, no punishment) for those who are in Christ Jesus (who believe in him as personal Lord and Saviour.) For the law of
the Spirit of life [which is] in Christ Jesus [the law of our new being] has
set you free from the law of sin and of death”.
From the
moment Sin, found its way into the universe. God had a plan, and from the point
it entered into our world, that plan came into motion. For sin first entered
the universe before it entered earth.
The
earliest record of Sin is in Isaiah 14:
“How you are fallen from heaven,
O [a]Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
13 For you have said in your heart:
‘I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.’
15 Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
To the [b]lowest depths of the Pit.
16 “Those who see you will gaze at you,
And consider you, saying:
‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble,
Who shook kingdoms,
17 Who made the world as a wilderness
And destroyed its cities,
Who [c]did not open the house of his prisoners?’
Here, it found its way into the universe and God had a plan for sin right from the that time when there was no time. He said:
Therefore, Sin’s destruction is not a debate, when might be the debate, but God is not a man that He should lie, and the destruction of sin is as sure as the thing you are most certain about.
Receiving forgiveness
was predicated on repentance. Without repentance, there is no forgiveness of
sins. If Sin must be destroyed, a man must repent and want to be free of His
sins. He must, using his freewill acknowledge sin and be willing to be free of its power.
Here, it found its way into the universe and God had a plan for sin right from the that time when there was no time. He said:
15 Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
To the [b]lowest depths of the Pit.
16 “Those who see you will gaze at you,
And consider you, saying:
‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble,
Who shook kingdoms,
17 Who made the world as a wilderness
And destroyed its cities,
Who [c]did not open the house of his prisoners?’
Therefore, Sin’s destruction is not a debate, when might be the debate, but God is not a man that He should lie, and the destruction of sin is as sure as the thing you are most certain about.
The question for everyman, is whether they will be destroyed right along
with it or not?
Sin holds its captive slave, hence for it to be destroyed, its captive
must be destroyed as well.
God gave man gifts to free Him from the captivity of Sin, the first is
His Freewill, the second is Jesus.
Freewill to many is considered a curse of man. For many have said that
if man were not free, we will have a better world, a better universe than the one
we have now. Those who say this do not understand the nature of God, If God is
Love, it can be said that Freewill will probably be His first gift to all
living creatures with a soul.
But by freewill alone, man could not be saved from the power of sin, we
see it through the ages. Many men fought to be free of the evil that was wroth
in their members, but no matter what they did, they seemed not to be able to
shake it off. It was like Sin being their master willed them to comply to its
bidding, even when they would not want to commit evil.
Sin had become not only an action for them, it had become a habit, an
addiction that only could be broken by force. Sin held them bound working its
way through their flesh, keeping their souls in the path of destruction, making
their spirit as it were dead.
Then Jesus came.
The scriptures are full of several prophecies about Jesus and his role
in restoring man to the fullness of what God made Him to be. Jesus was the last
blow to sin. The Bible says that because of Him, “there remains no sacrifice
for sins”. He was the Last Sacrifice and the Only Sacrifice. All other
Sacrifices were a shadow of what He will do to Sin.
First, By Jesus’s Death we received forgiveness of Sin, the remission of
sin.
God who made the universe made the laws such that there is cause and
consequence. Sin is a cause, death is the consequence. But in Jesus, the
consequence for the sin of man was not the man’s death but His own death on the
cross for as many that will receive Him.
If forgiveness of sin was all that we needed and could get, Christ would not have risen again. But God wanted us not only to be forgiven but to walk freely. Hence, He provided many tools with which we could walk freely.
Secondly,
By Jesus’ resurrection power is given to man for a new life. When we turn to
God for freedom, the old man is killed just like Jesus died and with His
resurrection, A new man is born just like Jesus rose a new man (the first
begotten of the dead). This new man is dead to sin, free from the power of sin,
walks according to the spirit, is a servant of righteousness, obedient unto God,
zealous of good works. The symbol of this new man is found in water baptism. In
being baptized, we show the world that we have buried the old man with his deeds and have
put on a new man.
What then, why
do we still find many believers falling into sin, living in sin and not free?
The answer is twofold. Faith and works.
Faith. A
believer must believe that He is made Holy and a servant of righteousness if
ever He must be free. He must believe that He is free from sin and dead to sin
and has received power over sin through the resurrection of Jesus. Just like the fact that a believer has not been healed today is not proof that God does
not heal or has not healed him, or the fact that one does not walk in health always is not proof that
God doesn’t give health, even so the fact that you have not yet began to walk
in victory over sin yet does not mean that God has not made you holy already.
He has made you a new man and like every other thing that God does and we have received, you must
appropriate your freedom through faith until it becomes the reality.
Works. Works
comes by practice. A soul who is used to acting in a certain manner must
overcome the flesh (which was the instrument of sin) before He can begin to
walk in the freedom that Christ has given. It is therefore true that a believer
might still fall into sin until He learns to overcome his flesh and use the
power given to Him at the cross to overcome sin. The Bible says of this “Sin shall therefore have no dominion over
thee”. Why? Because of the power of resurrection. Through the power of resurrection,
our spirit is made alive through the Spirit of God, who connects to our Spirit
and helps us live according to the Spirit and we teach our flesh to live free.
Ezekiel 36:
24-28 says:
For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. 25 Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.28 Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God.
We see here, the first step was to make us clean, which was done through the blood of Jesus.
For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. 25 Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.28 Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God.
We see here, the first step was to make us clean, which was done through the blood of Jesus.
The Second was a New Heart. God gives a new heart to every Christian. He
takes the old heart of the old man out because it is a heart of stone, hard-hearted,
set in its ways and can only do what it used to do which is serve sin. Then He
puts in us a heart of flesh, a heart which can choose between right or wrong,
using this heart we use our freewill to choose what God always wants us to do
or otherwise (this is called sanctification). (Depending on how we do, this heart of flesh can become a heart of stone).
Not only does He do this, He gives us His Spirit. He puts His Spirit
within us to make our walk with Him easier. The power of the Holy Spirit and
the Counsel of the Holy Spirit is always with us giving us grace and strength
to serve righteousness and stay free of sin.
We also have is word as a guide. The Psalmist says, “thy word is a lamp
to my feet and a light to my path always”. It helps to guide and to save from
sin and show the heavenly way,
You see through the ages God has given these to His people, so they can
be free from sin and many of them were able to live lives that were free from
sin. How much more you who lives in the time of grace.
So, to you I say, Walk Free, Walk in Victory. Don’t be satisfied until
you are free of every sin because God said it. Believe it and you will walk in
freedom.
The Old Hymns used to sing a song that said:
Would you be free from the burden of Sin?
There’s Power in the Blood, Power in the Blood
Would you over Evil, The Victory Win
There’s Wonderful Power in the Blood.
There is Power, Power
Wonder working Power in the Blood of the Lamb
There is Power, Power
Wonder working power in the precious blood of the Lamb.
Theirs is power to live free from sin. Accept it today.
Spend time with God in Prayer and He will give you the power to live free.
Say to your soul, Christ has redeemed me from the curse of sin and death. Therefore sin has no dominion over me. Confess it and walk with it and watch it become just as God said it.
Behold, what manner of Love, the father hath given unto us that we should
be called the sons of God. Sons of God, Saints, Holy People not because of
anything we have done, but because we have freely received all the grace that
was given unto us and we come into the fullness of Christ.
God Bless You.
A cursory Note.
Can a Christian make mistakes? Yes we can.
We make mistakes because unlike God, we are not omniscient or omnipotent hence we act only within the limits of humanity.
To put it practically, a Christian can go years without sinning and make a mistake at some point.
It is why we are warned to take heed by Christ himself in Revelation 3 and 4.
On the flip side, He can walk free till He sees his Master's face through faith and a consistent walk with the Holy Spirit.
But I must say that a Christian that sins everyday or week or month has failed to appropriate the power given to him at the cross.
Though we have an advocate for our sins in Jesus before God, we must not take God for a fool because He has said it ""whosoever is born of God does not commit sin because His seed remains in Him"
