Fanning the Flames

Without taking anything away from our last post, The End of Sin’s Power?, we do need to talk about how this works in practice.  The message of the New Testament – the indwelling resurrection power of Christ in our lives and the thousand new things that come with it – is all true, but experiencing this power is a process.

The path to all that happened at our new birth becoming our normal practice is hindered by at least two barriers.  The first is our group of enemies – the world, the flesh, and the devil – that seek to empower our moribund sin nature.  I will not elaborate here as we have discussed this challenge many times (see Galatians 5 and The War with the Flesh).

The second barrier is what I call the timeline of our lives.  We start off at birth with a sin nature, personality quirks, and all kinds of things that make us us (Nature).  As we grow, we are influenced by our family dynamic, our upbringing, our poor choices, etc. (Nurture).  Added together, Nature and Nurture become a volatile combination of selfishness, ambition, pride, laziness, lust, and the list goes on and on.

Somewhere  along the way, in the beauty of God’s grace, Christ breaks through this volatile combination with His salvation and we are delivered to a new life.  “If any man or woman be in Christ, they are a new person.  The old has passed away.  New things have come” (II Cor 5:17).  When Christ enters our life, we become a new person.  However, we still retain some of the parts and pieces of the old man, even though dead, that was our normal way of doing business.  So then, the normal Christian life is a life of constant change, renewal, and repentance.

And the prospect of change should excite us.  Who doesn’t want to be a better person?  Who doesn’t want a better marriage?  Who doesn’t want more family unity?  As a new person in Christ, we don’t want the volatile combination to continue.  Change is what we want.  When we fail to change or change moves too slowly, we become discouraged and are tempted to give up.  And the excitement of change grows dim.

What I have tried to say in a multitude of ways during these posts about our promised victory over sin’s power is that Christ has given us the promise of change and the power to change by the gift of the Holy Spirit who lives inside us.  This unseen change is instant and real, but the outward expression is not automatic.  The outward change is not overnight.  But the promise and power to change is available to every believer.

I have observed two accelerators that speed up our spiritual transformation; the outward practice of the change inside.  The first is the Word of God.  “Therefore putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21).  To “save your souls” means to deliver you from your present enemies in your struggle with sin.  The “implanted Word of God” that we receive through reading and study delivers us and feeds our spiritual transformation.  One of the keys to change is to change our thinking – getting rid of our former grid that we interpreted the world through – and begin to interpret the world through the grid of God’s thought process.  Here is a simple question, “How long will it take for your thinking process to become like God’s thinking process if you are never reading God’s Word, where His thinking process is described and explained?”  The answer might be infinity.

The second accelerator is our community of believers.  Change does not happen in a personal vacuum.  It happens in a community.  Lasting change has the  most hope of success when we grow together, side-by-side.  Is there a place for working on personal transformation by ourselves?  Yes!  But personal change has the best chance of “sticking” if it happens in the context of community.  Growing in Christ together is the emphasis of the over fifty “one another” passages of the New Testament.  “Love, encourage, greet, build up, be devoted to, accept, admonish, care for, serve, be kind to, speak truth to, be subject to, forgive, comfort, and have fellowship with one another” are just a few.  We need each other to flesh out what life looks like on the new path God has for us.

The self improvement message behind a certain brand of Bible teaching today is work harder and stop doing the bad stuff.  Try harder and stop doing the bad stuff.  Strive harder and quit the bad stuff.  It’s on you to clean up your life.

The message of the New Testament is believe who you really are in Christ.  Embrace who you are in Christ.  Live according to who you are in Christ.  Christ has cleaned up your life already through His death, burial, and resurrection.  You were created – in your new identity – for so much more than the bad stuff.  And by the way, stop doing the bad stuff.

The first message is essentially sin management; trying to manage our sinful tugs by the power of the will.  We do this by adhering to some kind of New Testament form of keeping the Law.  Or we set up a list and focus on the externals of keeping the law.  We fall into legalism and we are constantly on the lookout for failures in ourselves and others.

The second message is sin victory, the power of The Exchanged Life.  Turn your back on those sinful tugs because to the new identity believer, sin is not natural.  It doesn’t feel right.  It doesn’t taste right.  And you have the power to spit it out!  So, in regard to the bad stuff, just stop it.

Now in view of our internal conflict with  sin, the frailty of the human condition, the baggage we carry from our past, and the designs of Satan our enemy, can we really approach sin with a “just stop it” attitude?  As incredible as it sounds, this seems to be the message of the New Testament writers.

Look with me at Paul’s logic in Romans 6 where he declares us free from sin’s power on the basis of our old self being crucified with Christ and our new self being resurrected with Christ.  Paul writes, “What shall we say then?  Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?  May it never be!  How shall we who died to sin still live in it?  Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?  Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.  For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin” (Rom 6:1-7).

Because your sin nature died with Christ, it is not only morally wrong, but it makes no sense to continue in sin.  It is insanity.  “He who has died is freed from sin.”  The alternative Paul offers is “to walk in newness of life.”

Peter continues this message, “Therefore, since Christ has suffered death in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he (talking about you now) who has suffered death in the flesh (old nature died with Christ) has ceased from sin” (I Pet 4:1).

Does Peter’s “he who has died has ceased from sin” sound eerily similar to Paul’s “he who has died is freed from sin”?  Could these authors be carried along by the same Divine Author?  Could this message of freedom from sin be one of the main themes of the New Testament; the New Covenant; the New Arrangement between God and man?

Peter goes on to emphasize what changed in your relationship to sin in this passage as he continues, “So as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.  For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousals, drinking parties and abominable idolatries” (I Pet 4:2-3).

The time for sin is past.  The time for sin is in the rear view mirror.  Sin is no longer your natural affection, attraction, and action.  It would be insane to continue in sin when your sin nature died with Christ.

The apostle John comes to the same conclusion through a slightly different path.  Rather than focus on the death of our sin nature, John emphasizes our freedom from sin based on our new birth as children of God.  John concludes that as those who carry the very seed of God inside, we now have a moral resemblance to Christ; a moral resemblance that is incompatible with the practice of sin.

John writes, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be.  We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is.  And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.  Every one who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.  And you know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.  No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.  Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning.  The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil.  No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in Him; and he cannot sin, because He is born of God.  By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious:  any one who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother” (I Jn 4:2-10).

John’s logic is that to continue in sin as a believer is insane because of our new birth as a child of God.  It makes no sense to continue in sin when the seed of God dwells inside.  It doesn’t fit who we are.  Starting at verse two, the essence of this passage is:  as children of God in this world, we do not yet appear as we fully will appear, but one way we do look like God now is in our practice of righteousness.  In fact, to create in us a righteous person is one of the reasons Christ came.  “He appeared in order to take away sins” and “He appeared to destroy the works of the devil”.  Satan’s primary work is to take us down the path of sin, since it is his essential nature having “sinned from the beginning.”  Satan’s work is to empower sin.  Christ’s work is to destroy sin.

The message of these New Testament writers is consistent.  Our sin nature “died” “suffered death” “was destroyed”.  As a result we, filled with resurrection power, have what it takes to “walk in newness of life”.  Go in grace and embrace this gift and enjoy all that God has in store for you in your new life.  You, by the indwelling Spirit of Christ, have the power!

Consider these admonitions from the New Testament:

• “Let us lay aside the deeds of darkness…and put on the armor of light.” (Rom 13:12)
• “In reference to your former way of life, lay aside the old self…and put on the new self.” (Eph 4:22,24)
• “Since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices; anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech, and lying…and have put on the new self.” (Col 3:8-10)
• “Putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness…receive the word implanted which is able to deliver your souls.” (Jam 1:21)
• “Putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander…long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to [your present] salvation.” (I Pet 2:1-2)
• “Let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us…and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” (Heb 12:1)
• “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ…and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.” (Rom 13:14)
• Walk by the Spirit…and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” (Gal 5:16)

The New Testament summarizes the Christian life this simply:  lay aside the old self with its evil practices and put on the new self with its holy practices.  Or put another way, stop doing the bad stuff and start doing the good stuff.  But is it that simple to just “lay aside” the sin that tugs at us?  Simple may not be the right word, but impossible is not the right word either or why would we be admonished to lay aside the old self and its evil practices?  It must be possible to do.  Or why would we be encouraged to put on the new self and live in Christ’s resurrection power if it were impossible or nearly impossible to do so?

If we view or experience the Christian life as some kind of civil war with equally powerful forces for sin and good waging war in our soul, then we are missing the power implied in the verses to “lay aside and put on”.  The victorious Christian life is not only possible, but should be the normal course for every believer.  But there is a key to its power and we will talk about it next time.