Overcoming Sin

If you were to ask me this morning what I believe is probably the number one struggle of many
of God's children. I would say without any hesitation that that is the struggle to overcome the
habits of sin that are so deeply ingrained in all of our lives. You know the scenario? You come to
the Lord Jesus Christ. You know your sins are forgiven. You're a child of God. God gives you the
power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. He begins to renew your life and there is now a new
and a deeper desire to know God and to walk with God. And you start wanting to put away bad habits
and sinful actions and the more you struggle against sin and the more you see how deep sin runs in
your life the more you discover that for almost every step forward you take sometimes it's like you
take two steps backwards. It's unlike a familiar picture. And what happens in the lives of many of
God's children is one of two things then. We either begin to live under the kind of cloud of
condemnation that says well you know I guess I'm just not very good Christian and maybe I'm not
a Christian at all. And I guess I'll just never really measure up and so I'll just sort of you know
slink along in the Christian life hoping that nobody will make too many demands on me because you know
how it is I just can't do it. Or we swing to the opposite extreme and we begin to justify our
actions and we say well you know I'm only human and God knows that I'm only human so he's not
really serious about my changing my life and we commit ourselves to living an ongoing life
in the realms of sin that is contrary to our profession the world's full of people like that.
And Paul's whole thrust you will recall here in Romans chapter 6 is that it is impossible to be in
Christ and to continue living the old life. How can we he says in verse 2 who have died to sin still
live in it because on to point out as we saw two weeks ago that if we are truly in Christ
then we have not only died with Christ we have been raised with Christ and in Christ I am now
seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus and the same power that raised him from the dead
now lives in my life so that I can start beginning to live with increasing strength and conviction
that kind of life that God is calling me to and so here in Romans chapter 6 and the first 10
verses he gives us the theology of that he tries to help us to understand what it is to be in
Christ and then from verse 11 on to the rest of the chapter he begins to work out the practical
implications of that for your life and for my life and in the time that we have available this
morning what I want to do air with you from these verses that we've read together some very practical
principles of how to overcome that ongoing struggle that we all have with sin in our lives
and it begins as Paul in verse 11 with an understanding of who I am in Jesus Christ listen
again to verse 11 so you also must consider yourselves did to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus
you must consider yourselves did to sin and alive to God put it out two weeks ago that word
consider is really a mathematical term it comes from the field of accounting all the translations
have the word reckon and the picture here is that of a mathematician or an accountant who is
sitting down and he's going through his figures and he's checking out all the steps and all the
phases and then by the time he gets to the bottom he can only reach one conclusion because in mathematics
it's either right or it's wrong now Paul draws upon that and he says that's how you got to learn
to look at yourself from a biblical perspective you've got to look at how God sees you in Christ
I shared with you two weeks ago that one of our problems is that we are too introspective we look
at ourselves in Adam and we say well you know I can't be any of those things because well this is
how I am and this is what my weakness is and this is what my preoccupation is and and I just haven't
got it God says where to walk by faith learn to look at who you are in Jesus and discover that in
Jesus Christ you've died to all that junk and you have been raised to be alive to God you are
by Christ in our realm where legally you now have the right and the power to live out the things
that God has for you that doesn't mean we're automatically there experientially but it means we're
there positionally legally we have claim to the power that raised Jesus from the dead so that we
do can present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice an illustration that comes to my mind
that may sort of help us to pull that together is one that runs like this let's suppose to go
on vacation let's say you've gone for a couple weeks or a couple of months and in your absence
a squatter takes up in your house not likely story but let's just pretend as a matter of fact
a whole bunch of squatters take up in your house they move you up sell off all your furniture move
in their own furniture but they're naming your mailbox and you come back you know all laid back
in some tent whatever else and and there's these people living in your house and you say excuse me
I think this is my house what you do in here they're bunch of big bullies and they stare you down
and you know what do you mean this is your house I live here my painting in the wall my name in the
mailbox get lost go find another place now what are you going to do they're too big for you to
pick them up and throw them out well you sell go to the police and police will chase them out
that's nice but how will the police know it's your house I know you got it on his face but you know
doesn't always carry a lot of weight today's culture well of course what you do is you go to or
to the registry office and you get a copy of the deed that says this house belongs to you and maybe
the bank and you have legal title to this property now remember you've got legal title to this
property but these bad dudes are still living in your house the difference is you've now got the
law on your side and you can go there and with the police or whatever else it takes and you can
forcibly evict the people out of your house and you can take possession of your inheritance
that's how it works in Christ the enemy occupies our inheritance
and as long as we look at the enemy and all of his big size and our puny little strength we look
at him say well I guess I better go build another house but when I begin to understand that in Christ
all of this is mine and I stand on my rights then the power of law will push back the darkness
and I will receive my inheritance that's what Paul's talking about you must consider yourself
did to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ we need to begin to understand the incredible resources
that we have in Jesus Christ we'll never come into victory until we understand that by virtue
of who Christ is I have claimed to all the power of God to make me live obediently
and if we have difficulty understanding that as I think often we do we need to take seriously
Paul's advice and others of his letters and we need to cry out to God and we need to say to God
help me understand that help me to see the riches of who I am in Jesus Christ that's why Paul and
his letters spend so much time talking about the theology of who we are in Christ you know people
in today's culture are often sort of impatient with teaching and with doctrine because they want
the practical stuff well Paul says you can't live the practical stuff unless you understand the
theological background because unless you understand reality before the face of God the lie
will always knock you off your feet because the lie will always look bigger than the truth
you must consider yourselves did to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus
the number two says Paul haven't understood that and learning to live on that biblical basis
he says we must now actively begin to resist the ongoing struggle with sin
in our mortal bodies listen to verse 12 in the first part of verse 13 let not sin therefore
reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey their passions do not yield your members to
sin as instruments of wickedness two things and that verse and a half that I want us to note
this morning first of all notice that it's an imperative let not sin reign in your mortal bodies
in other words you must not let sin reign later on he says do not yield your members
to sin as instruments of wickedness and again it's an imperative that says you must take responsibility
so that the members of your body which is what he is talking about do not serve as instruments
of wickedness we have a responsibility to say no to the power of sin now that's critical
because there is a teaching that very easily we sort of absorb into our being whereby
having discovered that we cannot live the way that God wants us to live and that Jesus has to do
it we go beyond the biblical balance into an unbiblical passivity that sort of says well I can't
do it anyway and if anybody's going to do it it has to be the Lord Jesus and we're just going
to sort of sit back until it hits us and then when it hits us in a big powerful way then then
we'll start moving but because most of the time to most of us that isn't happening I guess it's
really God's fault that my life isn't really changing you with me and all kinds of people
when the back of their mind live that kind of life they're waiting for the big moment
for the divine revelation that all of a sudden grabs them by the scruff of the neck
and that makes them into something that they could never be
and there are those times and there are those moments when God in sovereign grace and love and
power will move into people's lives and he will just literally drag them into places where they've
never been before it happens I've seen it happen but if we think that's the norm and you start
sitting back waiting for that to happen what happens is that you end up sitting back for a long
long time because you see it is now an unbiblical balance. The grace that God has for your life
and for my life is not a grace that bypasses our own sense of responsibility. Paul and Philippians
chapter 2 puts it this way he says when he tells us to work out our own salvation with fear and
trembling he goes on to say because it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for
his good pleasure and so when we come to Jesus Christ he doesn't just sort of automatically take
over what he does is he first of all begins to strengthen our will and where as in Adam I had no
power to resist temptation and I didn't even want to because it kind of liked it now in Christ he
gives strength to my will so that I can start to say no but I got to do that I can't do it myself
but God's not going to do it for me I've got to do it by his grace and not only does he change my
will but he changes my ability and so whereas before I was a slave and I just really couldn't do
any of those kinds of things now that I'm in Christ God will work at me and restore me and he'll
bring situations and people into my life so that I can have the strength and the ability to start
saying no so understanding my position in Christ I must now first of all start saying no
to the reign of sin in my mortal body that's the second thing I want us to notice under this point
he uses the word mortal body very consistently in the book of Romans and Romans chapter 70 says
who will deliver me from this body of death Romans chapter 12 he says present therefore your bodies
as a living sacrifice to go on and the issue I believe that Paul is trying to establish
is that even though we are in Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit
share the transcendent power of the risen and the resurrected Christ my mortal body that is to say
my created frame is not yet glorified because in Romans eight he tells us that doesn't take
place in full Jesus comes back and what that means is that though I am a Christian
my body is still a body of death that is to say it is prone to the law of sin and death I never
arrive at a stage in this life whereby I can no longer be tempted because my body and all
of my created being is still subject to the force of sin and as we'll see in a few moments
it's my responsibility to see that sin does not reign in my body let me try to illustrate it
this way let's take our mind the seat of our thought life now the seat also at least to some degree
of our imagination in Christ God redeems my mind so that I can start thinking the way that
God wants me to think you know just as well as I do this morning that just because you are in
Christ that doesn't mean that my mind is automatically renewed because there are times in all of our
lives if our innermost thoughts were to be projected on a screen for the whole world to see we
would be desperately ashamed because you can be a Christian and still have your mind used as an
instrument of wickedness under the power of sin we can entertain wrong thoughts even though Christ
lives hidden me other example our emotions where people are feeling we can feel anger
we can feel joy elation disappointment discouragement we can feel high we can feel low and sometimes
one right after the other and though our feelings are partly psychological they are also to a very
large extent of physical in the sense that our feelings are conditioned by our bodies
you don't believe that just look at what happens to your emotions when you go through an extended
period of physical illness or when you're tired or when otherwise you're stressed out
God's desire for our emotions is that they be instruments of righteousness
that God's love and God's glory can flow through us so that we can have an appropriate reaction
and bless other people by the sensitivity that lives within our hearts
but you know as well as I do this morning that just because we are in Christ
doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit necessarily rules all our emotions all the time
our emotions are still prone to the reign of sin and again what Satan wants to do is grab hold
of our emotions and use our emotional well-being or the lack thereof to make us do things that we
would not do otherwise that's why temptation works in our culture particularly primarily in the
area of feeling and just because you're Christian you're not immune to that how many times do we do
things or not do things because we feel like it or we don't feel like it that true feelings are
subject to the reign of sin one more example our bodies our bodies have natural longings desires
and appetites that are legitimate we get hungry we have a desire for for sexuality there is a
biological drive in that direction we need security and protection and safety and comfort and
and all of these kinds of things under the reign of sin get perverted so that instead of
there being drive of them being drives that are controlled by the Holy Spirit through us
they become passions that now begin to drive us and make us do things that we ought not to do
you've ever tried fasting you'll know what an incredible drive hunger is if you've ever found
yourself in a situation where you could could not have if you've been accustomed to sexual
relations and they've been withheld from you then you will know the tremendous biological drive
that drives people to doing things that are outside of the world we live in a world where our bodies
can be yielded to sin as instruments of wickedness and as long as we're in Adam there's not much
we can do about that because as long as we're in Adam we go with the flaw that's how people live
Paul puts it this way Ephesians chapter 2 he says among these we all want to live in the passions
of our flesh following the desires of body in mind people live by what drives them from the inside
and because they are sinful Satan and sin grabs hold of their bodies and uses it to drive them
into instruments of wickedness but Paul says now I'm in Christ and when I'm in Christ I've died
to all of that stuff I've been raised into newness of life I've been raised into this whole realm
of grace where God not only forgives me for all of my transgressions but he gives me the power of
the Holy Spirit so that now I can start I can start resisting the pull of sin and what Paul
is talking about here is an understanding that I must now actively begin to resist the pull of
sin in my mortal body I don't have to be driven by my passions I don't have to be driven
by my feelings I don't have to be driven by my longing in Jesus Christ I can both have the
willingness and the power to say no and to say I don't want to serve sin I don't want to put a
brick in his kingdom I want to build the kingdom of God now that doesn't mean it's easy
and that doesn't mean we just automatically shake it all off and go on living a holy life
when patterns have been deeply ingrained in our lives and we start resisting them
we'll discover that at least initially all hell breaks loose you never knew how strong
sin is and you never knew how strong bad habits were until by the grace of Christ you start
wanting to resist them but the same power that raised Jesus from the dead will deliver us
in the context of the Christian community I believe as we confess our sins to one another and pray
for one another God's power will be there and we can resist the pull of sin number one we need
to take our stand in who we are in Christ number two we need to start resisting the sin
or not yielding our bodies our mortal who we are the power of sin and then number three Paul
goes on to say in this passage on a positive side we need to give ourselves in our totality
for the service of Jesus yield yourselves he says to God as men who have been brought from death
to life and your members to God as instruments of righteousness and notice again the contrast earlier
he said don't yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness but yield now your members
to God as instruments of righteousness what does it mean to be an instrument of wickedness
but what that means is that every time I allow sin to reign in my mortal body
I am putting a brick in the devil's kingdom every time I allow my mind to become a cesspool
I am giving Satan a stronghold in my life and I'm contributing to his kingdom
I'm an instrument of wickedness building a kingdom that is opposed to the reign of God every time
I speak words out of that are not spoken out of love and that are not yielded to the spirit of
God I'm putting into motion a whole cycle of events that one day will bear bad fruit I'm putting
a brick in the kingdom of the evil one and every time any part of my body is yielded to pursue sin
I am giving the enemy and other brick in his kingdom that's an awesome thing God played
I mean that's frightening in its implications that's what Paul's talking about and in Adam we
can't help but do that but when I'm in Christ and I begin to yield myself to God then when I
begin to act righteously and yielding my body as an instrument of righteousness God's kingdom is
being built and the darkness is driven back again that means when my mind is yielded to God
and I use my mind to glorify God and putting a brick in the kingdom of God
and where my emotions are yielded to the Lord and I can respond appropriately to somebody's
need and to somebody's heartache God's kingdom is being built a brick is being added
when I give my eyes and my ears and my heart and my mind to be obedient to God and his
service God's kingdom is being established and Paul's whole argument here in this particular
passage is just so just as we are no longer to yield our members to to sin as instruments of
wickedness we are now positively to yield ourselves to God as instruments of righteousness you
know the problem with a lot of Christians is they're so busy fighting sin negatively
they never get around to doing the positive if you've ever had dandelions in your lawn such as we
have without end over here then you know that the best protection for dandelions is not a go
out and dig them all out to grow good crop of gas is it not and the best protection to habits
that want to lay hold of us and drag us down is to cultivate our righteous spirit and to yield
ourselves to God so that with our hobby we can do what it is that God wants us to do one of the
problems with a lot of Christians is they want to live in both worlds and they want to have some
of the benefits of the kingdom of God and some of the benefits of the evil one and they sit
on the fence and they can't figure out how come they keep falling off of the wrong side
Paul says yield yourselves to God as many women brought from death to life and your members to God
as instruments of righteousness I believe there has to be day the life of all of God's people
where we understanding this teacher come to a point where we say
boy Jesus loved me while I was still a sinner and while I had nothing to do with him
he came to me and died for me pulled me out of sin brought me to himself
love still amazing so divine demands my soul my life my all and we come to that point where we say
I don't want to serve sin anymore I don't want the devil to have any satisfaction with my life
I want to give all of my life to the glory of God and we say Lord Jesus here I am use me in all
of my creativeness by your power so that every faculty of my life can be yielded
your praise before your glory and I think some of us need to go step further
we need to take the very specific parts of our being and we need to yield them to God
as instruments of righteousness there's some of us here we need to take our minds
and when you come to the Lord Jesus and we need to say Lord Jesus and you almost have to visualize
it in your own heart or Jesus hears in my mind I confess that my mind has been a cesspool
I don't control it it controls me I don't think it thinks for me external forces have
control over my mind that drag me where I don't want to go and I've given it into it and my
mind has been used of the evil one to put bricks in his kingdom and I don't want it anymore
I don't know Lord how you're going to change it I give it to you and I'll trust you that by your
grace you will help me to renew my mind so that my mind now can be used of you so that I can think
the kinds of things that give glory to you because I know that if I don't straighten it out
it's going to keep dragging my life downward some of us we need to give our emotions
to the Lord some of us our emotions have been Satan's tool
to keep us from building the kingdom of God when we're high we're high and when we're low we're low
and people around us don't know if they're going to get hugged or slugged
and we expect everybody else to walk around on us an egg shells and there needs to come a
point where we come to the Lord Jesus and we say Lord Jesus I agree that my emotions and my
feelings have been instruments of wickedness they've been used by sin and they've been used by the
evil one to hurt other people my reactions are not godly reactions and I sometimes in my
perversity hurt the people that are closest to me I don't want to leave that away anymore
or Jesus I give you my feelings I want you to change them so that by your power they will become
what you want them to be so that my feelings can be an instrument of righteousness not an
instrument of wickedness some of us need to take the very particular parts of our bodies and some
of us need to say Lord my appetite it's been Satan's tool to keep me in bondage when I get stressed
out I turn to the bottle if I feel incompetent I turn to drugs if I feel insecure I turn to the
refrigerator Lord my life is lived by the passions of my body and for years Lord I've justified
it and I've made excuses and I felt sorry for myself and I said well I just cannot be any other
way and Lord it's true I cannot be any other way but I yielded to you and Lord Jesus I pray
that your power will transform and will change and modify my heart some of us we need to yield
her sexuality to God we need to say God my body has been used by the evil one to put bricks in the
devil's kingdom I have hurt other people and I have been dishonest before your name by the
conduct of my sexuality let my body be a channel of your grace and an expression of your love
some of us we need to yield her mouths to God we need to say Lord my mouth is filthy
gossip I cut people down to size when they become threatening to me
and I am a critical person who always looks for the worst instead of the best
and I see that my heart is not motivated by love and not motivated by a desire to build your
kingdom and Lord it is seen and I don't know how you're going to change my mouth wash it out with
salt and I give it to you Lord Jesus and I want my mouth to give praise to God so that every
part of my being gives glory to God for the praise of God to be seen among all nations the world
will never believe our message unless we start living by the grace of God
the talk let me talk
and I know some of you are saying to yourselves well you know
I don't think I can do that I mean I've tried changing myself
and I've just decided that it's no use in trying to change myself because
well you don't know how deeply stuff runs in me
I guess Paul sort of anticipates that and his next verse doesn't he verse 14
for sin will have no dominion over you since you're not under the law but you're under
grace as long as you're under the law trying yourself to be with God wants you to be
all the law can ever do is make you feel worse and worse Paul will go into that in Romans chapter 7
he says I thought I was doing pretty good until the law came along into the law really showed me
for what I want because of the purpose of the law to drive me Jesus when I come to Jesus I come
under the reign of grace you know when I'm under the reign of grace all the many times when I fail
and confessed God forgives me so graciously when I'm under the reign of grace God has committed
himself to me and he says I don't care how stubborn stupid rebellious or backwards you put
together in Christ you have died in Christ you have been raised from the dead the same power that
raised him from the dead will raise you from the dead and you've got what it takes to be what God
wants you to be and then people always say well we'll never make it a hundred percent in my
responses never mind whether we make it a hundred percent or not with Paul let's leave what's
behind press forward to what's ahead knowing that when all has been said and done these mortal
bodies will die and as he says to Romans chapter 8 if we cater to them we'll have lost it all
but if we live by the spirit let's walk by the spirit because God is preparing us for a glory
is beyond comprehension I dream a dream God dreams a dream that dream is that God's people
will be so filled with the revelation of Jesus that laying hold by faith of his provision
they quit making excuses for their failure they learned to live in all the riches of God's grace
present their bodies as a living sacrifice to the praise of God's glory
and allow God to use them increasingly as instruments of righteousness sure will fail and will
all fail many times over I failed many times and so do you
but he began a good work in us we'll bring it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ
with the day of eternity dawns and we will be totally and fully redeemed and our bodies
our mortal bodies will have been transformed like into his glorious body in that day the very
pull of sin upon our mortal flesh will have disappeared and we will live forever and ever
as the perfect vehicle of God's love and God's glory will praise if he's most holy
let us pray
we hear your word father
but we confess that even as we hear it there's an ambivalence in the hearts of many of us
because in the one hand we know that your word is truth and there is simply no way around it
but that indeed is which a word says but Lord for many of us in some areas of our lives there
there is resistance to that to that reality because order that's really true then
that we may have to change and if we have to change then we have to stop making excuses
and Lord we confess that there is something very comfortable about looking at ourselves in Adam
and saying well we're such bad sinners and that's just the way it is
and it's an awesome responsibility to begin to confess that in Christ we are a new creation yet
that's what your word says help us Lord to believe it and help us to present every part of our
being to you so that our mouth and our eyes and our ears and our heart and our mind and our
hands and our feet our voice may not be yielded to the reign of sin but rather to the reign of the
righteousness of God to the end father that we might be used to view as a vehicle
of your love and of your grace so the whole world may see it we are indeed a holy nation
our royal priesthood God's own people
chose him to declare the marvelous excellencies of him who called us out of darkness and he
was light father made your word powerfully barefooted in our lives with Jesus Christ in his name
you
you
you